Kevin Kuhn's Reviews > Vortex

“Vortex” is book three of Robert Charles Wilson’s “Spin” trilogy. Book one, titled “Spin,” won the Hugo for Best Novel in 2006. It was an epic tale filled with huge sci-fi ideas mixed with large dollops of human drama. Book two was named “Axis,” and carried on the large mysteries laid out in book one.

The beginning of “Vortex” is sizzling, hooking me quickly. Two storylines are intertwined. We follow a character named Turk from book two, who has been thrust ten thousand years into the future. Turk encounters human descendants in a futuristic mobile city named “Vox.” Meanwhile, back on near modern-day Earth, somehow a man named Orrin is writing the account of Turk in the distant future. Once the excitement of these two unlikely scenarios wears off and we settle into the story, the trilogy slows down again. Wilson delays the reveal of these mysteries until the final ten percent of the book. Of course, there is drama throughout, shadowy figures are attempting to falsely incarcerate Orrin, and Vox is not the paradise it originally appears to be. However, there is far too much explaining and frankly the characters and action weren't interesting enough to pull me through to the conclusion.

The ending is better and attempts to spin the trilogy off its axis and into a vortex of transcendent resolutions (see what I did there). It’s ambitious and grandiose, but in my opinion, falls short in living up to the expectations set in the excellent book “Spin." Three stars for this conclusion of the mind-stretching sci-soap-opera trilogy.