Now, this is what I call space opera: huge ships exchanging any number of ravening beams of destruction, implacable alien menaces, doomsday weapons, plucky heroines and heroes fighting desperate odds. Oh, yeah, this is the big time! All of the familiar elements of Reynolds’ fiction are here, from the miraculous but corrupted and decaying technology to the once-glittering but now rather rusty civilizations and the damaged individuals hoping for some sort of redemption. Not to mention the various clades of humanity still managing to survive, despite themselves. Redemption Ark is set in the same universe as Revelation Space and Chasm City but roughly half a century after. Thanks to reefersleep, time dilation and nanotechnology, many of the characters from these two books are still...