The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die

The Gap Cycle is the Space Opera equivalent of Aliens - as Roger Ebert described it in July 18th, 1986 review of the movie.

It's a constant assault on all things decent and a rollercoaster ride where no one is safe. You can't put it down for 100s or pages at a time and when you do you feel drained emotionally as if you had just lived through the hell the characters go through.

It's definitely one of the darker series out there. Superbly written and with skilled world building, especially considering the time framing: most series jump either too far or not far enough through time and end up less believable. The Gap universe has very short time frames - everything happens within 100-120 years (Holt Fasner's lifetime). At first this seems too short to be believable- but after you think about it, especially through book 3 and 4, you kind of realize it only seems short because it's not the typical “250 years later” like most books/series/universes try to get away with.

While time in the story seems wobbly at first you get used to it once you have thought it through. It gives the story speed. The problem of space remains - the story is very fast paced and getting from A to B never consistently takes the time you would expect it to take for the distances involved, which are thankfully kept very vague. It's more a “Star Wars”-y type approach to space than the hard-sci-fi one. But it's okay.

The characters have tremendous backstories and are rounded in a way you usually don't find in action-driven Space Opera. The concept of assigning “motifs” to characters is delightful and masterfully executed - and while a Hashi/Heisenberg combination might be a short jump for a sci-fi novel a Liete/Wind paring is just short of inspired and very memorable (especially because she's just minor character - but you feel how much work the author has put into her).

And of course there's sex, drugs, violence, cyborgs, aliens and space battles.
So, all in all a very enjoyable read.

But then why did it have to end like pink bubble gum?
“All's well that ends well” seems just a little disappointing.

The characters in this series have incomprehensible motivations. Each one seems to make all their decisions based on some negative emotion. The authors usage of repetition, to convey dismay or perhaps to remind the reader of what occurred a couple pages ago, is annoying and time consuming.