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Transcendence

Book 3 of The Heritage Universe

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About this listen

 The Zardalu are back....

The search for the Builders, the legendary alien race whose unfathomable constructs continue to perplex scholars and explorers alike, has led Builder expert Darya Lang, adventurer Hans Rebka, and treasure hunters Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial to an unknown Builder artifact far outside the spiral arm. There they find the Zardalu, once the greatest menace ever known to the worlds of the spiral arm, enslaving entire races and exterminating others, guided by the unswerving belief in their own supremacy.

The only chance to eliminate the Zardalu threat is to find them all and wipe them out before they have time to breed back up to strength and once again threaten civilized beings everywhere. But the way will not be easy. Even if they manage to locate the Zardalu, they still have the Builders to deal with. For the closer they get to their quarry, the clearer it becomes that the Zardalu and their world are closely entwined with the fate, and the plans, of the Builders themselves.

©1992 Charles Sheffield (P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction

Critic reviews

"Sheffield's narrative is smooth, and the joys, pitfalls and dangers of exploration are conveyed well." ( Publishers Weekly)
All stars
Most relevant
Concept and storyline are both excellent. Narrator is brilliant and VERY funny at times. The only fault I can see is the production could use a little work to clean up the transition between some of the chapters in the third book. Overall a most pleasant find in the plus catalog.

One of the most entertaining hard SF series I’ve read in years.

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The story drops down a gear, regroups and then moves forward again with careful precision, borrowing from sci-fi influences such as Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Aliens where it needs to, to balance the action and mystery. It's all in there, and as you would expect from Charles Sheffield, the subject matter is always treated intelligently and with scientific justification along the way.

This is a comparatively short book, so the action is single layered and for this reason, easy to stay in touch with, remaining focussed on one group of characters throughout. And the ensemble cast work well together even though it is largely circumstance and not personal affinity that binds them altogether. Easy to put aliens into a story, much more difficult to make them interesting and relevant. Transcendence does that.

The novel asks, and answers, some new questions that sit neatly within the plot, although other questions you may have found yourself asking for some time begin to feel misplaced and rather more complex than you might have first thought.

It is a compact story, plays well and ends at a good point. There are more Heritage Universe novels, and Transcendence is not the last in this particular sequence either, though I will bow out at this point, but maybe will return at a later date.

Definitely above average.

The thinking man's Alien

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very easy listening with a good cast of characters just abit odd because the upload was lazy without the disc start info not being edited out :-)

good story

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Absolutely brillent, i have enjoyed both the 3 audio books and the naration, A must listen too Author

Joy

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Very well written and narrated. Transcendence is (so far) the last in the series but plenty of scope for further adventures.

I enjoyed all three books in this series

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