The second volume of Sean Williams’ Astropolis trilogy is a welcome successor to Saturn Returns, and fortunately explains a lot of what actually happened in the first book. Imre Bergemasc has been a busy chap since the end of Saturn – given that he was reassambled from partial data at the start of that book, he’s doing well to have become the ruler of the galaxy! To be more specific, Imre now heads the Returned Continuum, an empire that he is gradually expanding in an effort to bring the galaxy back to some kind of order from the chaos into which it had descended after the Slow Wave.

Aided by the wonderfully-conceived Apparatus, a kind of quantum mega-computer  that exists outside our space-time continuum, and by his old command team from the Corps, Imre has been busy in the hundreds of thousands of years that has elapsed since Saturn Returns. Establishing Earth as a base, he makes grand tours to bring new star systems in to the fold, trying to recreate things as they were – but thoughts of the mega-powerful Forts, the beings who ruled the roost before the Slow Wave, and the two competing organisations who seem to oppose any attempt to recreate them, the Barons and the Luminous, dominate his concerns, especially after he ‘kidnapped’ by the partial remains of a Fort and given a prophecy.

Breaking off his mission and returning to Earth, Imre finds his Regent less trustworthy than ever, while Render (still enigmatic but no longer speaking solely in Gary Numan lyrics) can at least be relied upon to hold the fort. But Imre is willing to take the risk of leaving Earth in the company of Emlee and a surving Fort called MZ to try and find out more of the origins of the Slow Wave and the nature of the mysterious Domgard, with which it is somehow connected. It’s an intriguing journey on which we get a much clearer view of who (or should that be what) the Luminous are, though the agenda of the Barons is still less clear. One thing’s for sure, Imre’s other self (who he refers to as Himself) will not be squeamish about doing in our version of Imre, and Imre learns a lot about what Himself was up to (this kind of concept really stretches the limits of the language!).

I found Earth Ascendant more enjoyable than Saturn Returns because I now have a much clearer view of what’s going on in Williams’ universe. It’s well structured and crams a lot in to only 276 pages (how refreshing, a compact piece of space opera). On the basis of the revelations contained within, I very much look forward to the concluding volume, The Grand Conjunction, which is out very soon.

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