Heaven's River
Author: Dennis E. Taylor
Genre: Sci-fi
Released: 24 September 2020
Rating:
More than a hundred years after going silent, clone Bob named Bender has never been found. Bob-1 organises a search expedition deep into Heaven's River — a colossal megastructure inhabited by an intelligent, beaver-like species called the Quinlans. A more focused story than its predecessors, set almost entirely within the megastructure. Slower-paced but rich in world-building detail.
When I wrote about book 3, I said that the constant context switching was becoming tiresome, and I would have liked to see Taylor focus on a single storyline.
Well, be careful what you wish for, I suppose. Because in book 4 of The Bobiverse, Heaven’s River, Taylor does just that. He focusses pretty much exclusively on a single storyline where Bob-1 goes to find a long lost clone, Bender.
The whole thing centres around a mega-structure called Heaven’s River where a race a beaver like folks called the Quinlans live. So we now have beaver-like Quinlans, the Merekat like Pav and the bat-like Deltans. Honestly, it all feels a bit unimaginative and repetitive.
🚨 Spoiler alert!
This book was longer than the others and I really felt it. 600 pages of Bob-1 running around Heaven’s River, finding Bender, then running around avoiding capture over and over just felt a bit boring after a while.
Overall I felt the book was okay, but I did feel like it dragged on a little too long. There’s multiple references to how the Bobiverse is thousands strong on this book and I think Taylor missed a trick by not exploring some more of the Bobiverse in Heaven’s River.
Taylor has started working on Book 5, I’ll probably pick it up and read it, but I have to be honest, Heaven’s River didn’t leave me yearning for more.
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