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Book #276 of 2021:

The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #5)

I still don’t altogether love this 90s space opera, which has a lot of scenes of people just standing around talking, even in this climactic finale. Don’t get me wrong: the dialogue here is taut and often legitimately surprising in a detective fiction sort of way, where interpersonal tensions are high and a character might reason their way through an extended chain of inferences to uncover someone’s hidden motive. The subplot of political intrigue between the nominal governing body and the corporate-owned de facto police is at its most engaging ever. Yet the ratio of all that to the action is a bit off for my tastes. If you open the last novel in a series with an alien warship chasing the ragtag protagonists out of deep space to humanity’s doorstep, I’m going to be somewhat antsy when the ensuing standoff then takes half the book to boil over.

Ultimately, though, the payoff is worth it, and on balance this title delivers a satisfying enough conclusion to various arcs that I’d call it a winner. Conceptualized as a retelling of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, this story has long kept its ‘mortal’ sphere separate from the mighty powers claiming the right to control everyone’s destiny, and it’s downright thrilling to finally see those domains crash together, especially when certain figures pay a price for their hubris. There’s a thread of poetic justice winding throughout this text, and it’s hard to think of a single person who doesn’t get a measure of what they deserve in the end. Even the problematic Angus Thermopyle, originally introduced as a vile rapist and torturer, has sacrificed so much by this point — both under his own volition and not — that the idea of his redemption isn’t totally abhorrent.

I also appreciate how abuse of that nature is no longer an active element in the narrative, although it of course continues to inform the stakes as backstory. Author Stephen R. Donaldson can go to some pretty dark places, and for a project that involves cyborg slaves, mutagenic viruses, and suicide bombers, this particular volume is oddly on the lighter side of his writing. That may be a poor fit for how the tale begins back in The Real Story, but it’s a welcome relief and a good grace note to depart on, too.

This volume: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Volumes ranked: 2 > 4 > 5 > 3 > 1

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I'm reading the gap cycle series rn if anyone has read this i desperately want to discuss PLZ HMU i just finished book two

#The gap cycle #gap cycle #Gap into conflict #gap into vision #the real story #stephen donaldson #stephen r. donaldson

Book #260 of 2021:

The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #4)

The penultimate volume in this Wagnerian space opera is a welcome step back up in quality after a third novel that I personally consider a bit slow and talky. This one is an improvement on all fronts: it’s action-packed, it focuses more on the immediate stakes surrounding Morn among the unsavory criminal and alien elements and less on the cerebral plotting of her distant superiors, and the scenes in that latter arena are actually gripping for once.

On this reread, I’m particularly interested in the debate over whether to bring the galactic security forces under the administration and oversight of the elected government, as opposed to the private corporation they work for now — which isn’t an exact analogue to our modern ‘defund the police’ conversation, but has a certain resonance to it nonetheless. Both there and out in frontier space, we find intrigues aplenty, with shifting loyalties and power dynamics that feel in a state of constant negotiation. It’s hard to predict exactly which rivals will put aside their differences to team up next, but when they do, author Stephen R. Donaldson always manages to make it seem perfectly motivated and true to everyone’s history and nature. That’s no easy feat, especially in the midst of the massive interstellar battle that takes up a lengthy portion of the end of this title.

In terms of the wider series, this entry is also refreshing for including a minimum of rape and other forms of abuse. Those things still happened to people in the past and inform their decisions and reactions in the present, but they aren’t really actively threatening the protagonists for the most part anymore, which is a nice change. Likewise, although the child born full-grown and implanted with a copy of their mother’s memories continues to be problematically described as a boy, they do use the word “daughter” to refer to themself here, which is probably the queerest characterization possible in a Donaldson story. (Offhand, I can think of only two gay figures in all his writing, Milos Taverner in the last book and Master Gilbur in Mordant’s Need, each of whom turns out to be a minor antagonist and sadistic sexual torturer. I’d love to be wrong about that, though, so please do correct me if I’m mistaken.)

The narrative remains somewhat uneven, and I can tell that I’m never going to enjoy the Gap Cycle as much as I do this writer’s Thomas Covenant fantasy saga. But this is one of its better moments overall, delivering a thrilling setup for the final hour ahead.

[Content warning for ableism, child abuse, gun violence, body horror, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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Book #249 of 2021:

The Gap Into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #3)

After a curious series debut and a more promising immediate sequel, this third Gap volume lands somewhere in between, delivering a decent yet slightly perfunctory follow-up. As is often the case for the middle story in a larger saga, there are elements that feel as though they’re moving pieces into place for the endgame at the expense of crafting the best possible present adventure, and in classic Stephen R. Donaldson fashion, a lot of that involves dialogue-heavy scenes of characters reasoning their way through an argument to certain unexpected implications. These conversations are interesting to a degree, but it’s hardly the most riveting read absent much accompanying action, and the first half of the novel in particular seems to drag as a result.

Part of the problem is that the last book built its heroine Morn Hyland into quite a capable and intriguing figure, only for this one to sideline her for nearly its duration. We instead spend practically all of our time with either criminals like Nick Succorso and Angus Thermopyle — each an unrepentant rapist and murderer — or various executives of the United Mining Companies, waging a somewhat abstract and bloodless campaign of boardroom intrigue against one another. I assume those in the latter group are meant to represent the Norse gods in this loose retelling of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, but without an existing familiarity with that nineteenth-century opera work, I’m largely indifferent to all their moves and countermoves so far, which appear impossibly distant from anything happening in the main plot.

Back among the mortals, I’m invested enough in where the narrative is headed, but not necessarily in the current focal protagonists. Angus has been transformed from villain to victim by this point, restrained by neural implant and subjected to abusive acts of rape and torture, but I find him pitiable rather than compelling, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get over my horror at seeing him forced to put burning cigarettes on his tongue and then swallow them whole. Readers can debate whether he deserves a redemption arc, given his own long list of crimes, but no one should be treated the way he is here. In Game of Thrones terms, he’s a Theon, and while I want his anguish to end, I’m not really rooting for him in general. Nick, of course, is even worse, and one of the rare genuine thrills in this title sees members of his crew finally banding together to stand up to the petty tyrant.

On reflection, I suspect enjoyment of this text may hinge on one’s ability to care about such awful people doing awful things to each other, which might just be a bridge too far for me. I love a dark genre piece and a good conflicted and flawed antihero, including Donaldson’s famous Thomas Covenant invention or Morn herself when she’s actually around and involved. But the dueling space pirates are not my favorite, and for now they’re playing too central a role in these events.

[Content warning for sexism, ableism, transphobia, and slavery.]

★★★☆☆

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Book #236 of 2021:

The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #2)

This sequel is a major improvement over its predecessor, deepening the worldbuilding of the space opera setting and populating it beyond a simple archetypal trio. We also switch our focal protagonist from the rapist lowlife Angus Thermopyle to his recovering victim Morn Hyland, who proves to offer far more engaging a perspective. Although there’s still a fair bit of rape and other brutality, we are at least no longer seeing it through the eyes of the perpetrator, which is a welcome change. I don’t recommend the previous volume to everyone, but I will say that any readers who can bring themselves to finish it should check this one out to watch how the story gets better from there.

Morn herself is a capable heroine, in the tradition of author Stephen R. Donaldson’s earlier Linden Avery and Terisa Morgan (of the Thomas Covenant and Mordant’s Need series, respectively). Like those women aboard Starfare’s Gem or within the walls of Orison, she spends a lot of time bouncing around a contained environment, learning how to leverage the insights of her despair in conversation with one figure after another. Here, that’s the spaceship of the pirate who rescued her from Angus, and who gradually reveals himself to be just as cruel and vindictive a captor. Nick Succorso is the true villain of this piece, and his steady transition into that role is a skillful exhibit of writing and plotting.

The richer texture of the narrative adds an interesting transhumanist element as well. Morn’s neural implant was initially employed to keep her docile for Angus’s regular assaults, but now that the controls are in her own hands, she’s able to wield it to both manage her Gap sickness and push her mind and body way past their natural limits. She’s reclaiming her power following significant trauma, especially when she uses the device to secretly increase her arousal for marathon lovemaking sessions with Nick, whose touch we’re told she would otherwise loathe. This sci-fi sex work isn’t always comfortable to observe, but as a way of playing the captain’s egotistical expectations against him, it’s a great weapon in her arsenal.

Honestly, the cadet’s personal arc in this novel is fantastic, and I’m tempted to give the title my highest five-star rating on her basis alone. Two items temper my praise somewhat, however. First, the background thread of galactic politics and Angus’s transformation into the cyborg ‘Joshua’ doesn’t really go anywhere, teeing up certain important details for the rest of the saga but not exactly contributing to the immediate adventure quite yet. And second, too little attention is given to Morn’s “son,” the child grown from a fetus to a teenager in minutes and imprinted with an exact copy of her memories. (Thank the local aliens, whom I haven’t had room for in this review but who are creepy and incomprehensible in the best way.) This could be a valuable transgender storyline — Davies clearly experiences some dysphoria at not having Morn’s expected form upon waking — but the text and characters all use he/him pronouns for the kid, without exception or challenge. While I’m trying not to impose my 2021 understanding of gender on fiction from three decades ago or insist on a tidy exploration of an inherently messy subject, something feels off about all this. I think my issue is not that this treatment of the teen is automatically transphobic, but rather that Donaldson keeps such a fascinating development on the periphery of the tale, depriving us of the information necessary to grapple with it effectively at all.

It’s been so long since my last reread that I can’t remember how these aspects continue to play out, but they’re substantial enough to impact my enjoyment and merit a ‘very good’ four stars instead of an ‘excellent’ five for the current book. Overall, though, this is a strong effort that’s far darker than the usual products of its genre, and a big step forward from the original launch.

[Content warning for addiction, domestic abuse, torture, self-harm, suicide, and racism.]

★★★★☆

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Book #224 of 2021:

The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #1)

This is a difficult book to read, putting us into the mind of one of the vilest science-fiction protagonists ever created. Angus Thermopyle is not an interstellar pirate in the charming rogue sense; he’s an amoral loner who murders without hesitation merely to finance repairs to his patched-up garbage heap of a ship. He’s also a rapist who kidnaps a police cadet and inflicts himself on her over and over again after implanting an illegal neural device that can inhibit all motor functions at his command. He beats her up on several occasions too, while she’s forced to stand there unresisting. This is so much worse than author Stephen R. Donaldson’s classic Thomas Covenant antihero, who famously assaults a girl at the start of his own first novel then spends the rest of his time in her world repenting and atoning for the crime. I know plenty of readers who can’t stomach the fantasy saga because of that inciting event, and I’d advise all of them to give this one an even wider berth.

The writer isn’t interested in rehabilitating or redeeming Thermopyle, however. We learn enough about his background to grasp that he’s caught in a toxic cycle of abuse, yet we’re never really encouraged to root for the man, at least in this debut title. At best, we can maybe sympathize as his options claustrophobically collapse around him, but for the most part we’re simply presented with a wicked little character study, well-drawn and thoroughly despicable.

As described in the Afterword, Donaldson’s goal is to establish a trio of archetypal figures — the villain, the victim, and the rescuer — and then gradually shift our understanding of which is which. So the evil brute is transformed before our eyes into a pitiable wretch, his captive finds the inner strength to become a savior to them both, and the dashing captain who seems like the hero she needed is ultimately revealed to be just as cutthroat and dangerous as her original captor. (The latter two arcs occur mainly in the sequels, although we see their initial steps here.)

All of that is interesting on a technical and cerebral level, but I’m not sure if it can quite make up for how unpleasant an experience it is to actually get through this portion of the plot. This volume is strange as well in the light of those ahead, reading almost like an abstract morality play as compared to their more epic scope. The Gap Cycle is literally a space opera, modeled as a loose retelling of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, but you wouldn’t necessarily realize that from this premiere, which includes basically only three people and maintains a tight focus on the one. The worldbuilding isn’t totally absent, but we’re lacking the rich detail and supporting cast that will fill out the larger narrative. There isn’t even a whisper of aliens yet, despite how prominently they’ll eventually feature. It’s a bit like The Gunslinger in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, an important prologue that you shouldn’t skip, but that stands out as an imperfect fit for the sweeping tale that follows.

Overall, I guess I feel sort of neutral towards The Real Story. It’s better than I had remembered and feared from half a lifetime ago in high school, and there are ambitious structural complexities that speak to why Donaldson is one of my favorite authors in general. But the subject matter is too grim and too limited to such an odious person for it to be an altogether enjoyable venture.

[Content warning for sexism and racism.]

★★★☆☆

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Gap Drives anyone?

So looking at some other FtL travel alternatives for different story ideas that I have and I keep coming back to the gap drives featured in Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap Cycle series. I get the theory with the drives is that they say divert the space between two points from a straight line to a fold bringing them together but this is where it loses me. Do the drives themselves generate some sort of unstable wormhole? Which would kind of explain the whole gap sickness thing with all that going on. Is it a quantum entanglement kinda thing? I mean the books were written some years back before that started being talked about big but I'm curious because warp drives are great but in AU writing I like mixing things up.

#sci fi technology #stephen r donaldson #gap drives #the gap cycle #fanfic musings