The best way to judge a book is normally by reading it with no prior knowledge of the author or their oeuvre, thus avoiding the danger of judgment distorted by commercial success, critical acclaim or unwarranted obscurity – so it was with great surprise, after reading and enjoying Absorption, that I discovered the number of books John Meaney has previously published (none of which adorn my walls, though we may have to change that), and the fact that, far from being a new space opera milieu I was reading about, Meaney has already published four books in what is known as the Pilots Future History – however, with a new publisher (Gollancz) comes an opportunity for a fresh start, one that you sense Meaney is grabbing with both hands, and no prior knowledge of the Pilots’ universe is required to enjoy Absorption.

And enjoy it I certainly did – fans of Peter F. Hamilton will enjoy the sheer breadth of storylines that it encompasses: an ancient Norse warrior’s journey; a young, female, Jewish physicist in interwar Europe, a scientist and explorer in Earth’s future, and the unusual species with which she makes first contact; and young Roger Blackstone, a Pilot living undercover on a human world in the very far future. On the face of it they have little in common, but sporadic visions of a mysterious silver being, and a sense of connection, unite them somehow. The Roger Blackstone story line, which is most closely tied in with the Pilots, mu-space, the Pilot homebase of Labyrinth and presumably what Meaney has previously written, is also very Hamiltonian, from the relationships between Pilots and ships, to the feel of the future tech on the world of Fulgor.

As the first volume of the Ragnarok trilogy, this is very much about establishing characters and settings, and the overall plot direction is lightly sketched – each of our heroes is linked by the ability to see black ‘energy’ swirling around a few individuals they encounter, which in the case of Gavriela Silberstein includes the young Adolf Hitler, and each, apparently, is destined to become a part of the Ragnarok Council, but we will have to wait for the next volume to find out what that entails. The most substantial storyline, Roger Blackstone’s, involves the havoc wrought by a rogue Luculentus, a bio-engineered super-human, and the effects that she has on Fulgor, while other characters are only encountered once or twice, such as the enigmatic Russian spy Dimitri.

Meaney’s prose is enjoyable, and he is very adaptable as a writer, which he needs to be given the range of settings, periods and characters that make up Absorption. All in all, a very intriguing and promising start to a trilogy, one whose development I shall definitely be following further.

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