After stepping through the Hatch, our intrepid
adventurers find themselves back on Earth, but it is not
Earth as any of them remember. Instead, the centurions of
Ancient Rome have become the dominant power and have
remained as colonizers in the stars. With a Greek doctor
and a young slave boy named Chu, the explorers try
desperately to understand the secrets behind the Hatches
and the kernels. What none of them can know is that there
is something bigger out there, something controlling
their destinies. When it comes down to the end of the
universe, the continued discoveries will change
everything again.
The old favorites return: Yuri Eden and ColU
banter back and forth with as much loving vitriol as
ever. Hatches remain difficult to understand and
impossible to predict. When it is finally revealed what
the Hatches are, fans of the first novel will lose their
minds. The cycles of birth and death are addressed
several times as the continuation of every species notes.
The Roman and Norse elements added within the new world
are fascinating, if somewhat obtuse. And of course, there
is Per Ardua, a homeworld so unlike Earth and yet so much
the same.
PROXIMA, the first book, was difficult to get through based
on concepts and length alone. This one has the same
problem tenfold. There are so many new additions and new
characters in the first few chapters alone that I was
nearly compelled to write a chart to remember who was
who. It was entirely too easy to get lost, and as such I
did not enjoy this book as much as I did the first. When
dealing with such complexity in a novel, it can be
difficult to relax and enjoy the narrative. Convoluted
storylines combined with a great deal of excess prose
really bog this down.
Even so, with all that is added, ULTIMA is still
a powerful science fiction experience that I don't
honestly think fans of the genre can afford to miss. It
provokes deep thought, and asks the reader all the
right questions. And when the end really comes, will you
be on Per Ardua, or will you be exploring the galaxy
through yet another Hatch?
Hailed as “one of the most inventive writers that science fiction has ever produced" (SF Site), Stephen Baxter builds on the massive success of Proxima with a career-defining novel of big ideas....
On the planet of Per Ardua, alien artifacts were discovered—hatches that allowed humans to step across light-years of space as if they were stepping into another room. But this newfound freedom has consequences....
As humanity discovers the real nature of the universe, a terrifying truth comes to light. We all have countless pasts converging in this present—and our future is terrifyingly finite. There are minds in the universe that are billions of years old and now we are vulnerable to their plans for us....
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