Heaven's -- Yes

It's been about a year since I finished the Bobiverse trilogy by author Dennis E. Taylor -- the tale of an expanding society of cloned brain scans of a 21st-century man, exploring the cosmos centuries in the future. Except that while the three books do tell a complete and satisfying story, Taylor apparently never planned to end the series as a trilogy. He's said he might have as many as 10 Bobiverse books in him, give or take. And with the fifth arriving soon, it seemed like the right time to enjoy the fourth, Heaven's River.

This book sees the first Bob replicant on an interstellar search for a fellow clone who disappeared decades earlier. The search leads him to discover a new alien race living in a massive artificial structure... and then working to infiltrate that structure. Meanwhile, things are changing in the Bobiverse itself. So many clones of clones of Bob have now been created, with younger Bobs "drifting" so far from the brain scan of the original, that subfactions are emerging within the whole. The Bobiverse must deal with internal conflict for the first time, with the "Skippies" (who have an intense focus on artificial intelligence) and "Starfleet" (who think the Bobiverse should withdraw from all interactions with biological lifeforms).

I think because the first three books of the Bobiverse series really did tell a seemingly complete story, I imagined that this fourth book would be kicking off a new trilogy. Instead, Taylor now seems to be thinking about his series over the long haul, approaching it as a writers room might approach a season of television. Heaven's River is an "episode" in the model, with some stand-alone parts and some threads woven in for future storytelling.

The self-contained aspects feel most satisfying to me. This book spends a lot of time with a new alien race, the Quinlans. Their oddly stagnant society, inside a massive spaceborne superstructure, is an intriguing mix of interesting characters, larger mysteries, and quirky alien ideas blended with more human-resonant behavior. And much of this story involves going into this society undercover, which I think really works for this book. It's not just that I love a heist (though longtime readers of the blog know I do)... it's that it makes for a nice departure of the often galactic stakes of the first three Bobiverse books to move to a smaller, personal scale for much of this book.

Other elements of the book get much less word count, and are accordingly less satisfying to me. But then, Taylor clearly wasn't aiming to wrap up everything in this book if he's planned some half a dozen more. The idea of this "drift" as cloned Bob copies become ever less like the first? That's fertile ground for future books -- not only for stories involving the major factions introduced here, but for other future factions that may yet show up in later books.

Still, I maybe could have wished for a bit more of a tease about where things are heading? One chapter of the book really sticks out in my mind, a prolonged role-playing session with a group called the "Gamers." It takes a LOT of time, ultimately for no other clear purpose than for one older "Bob" to realize that these "Bobs" are different -- a point being made abundantly clear already elsewhere in the book. I can only surmise that so much ink is spilled for the "Gamers" because they have a big story yet to come... but it feels like an unnecessary diversion here. (Or maybe Taylor just found it fun to write one chapter of a fantasy novel? In which case, it's kind of even more of a diversion?)

No matter how much track is being laid here for the future, though, there's still plenty enough here to satisfy. If you liked the other Bobiverse books, it's impossible you won't enjoy this one. You still spend time with the same pithy protagonists, on similar quirky light sci-fi adventures. And if you're listening to the audiobook, it's still all read perfectly by Ray Porter, who manages to put a wonderfully subtle spin on the different Bob clones.

I give Heaven's River a B+. And while part of me will be sad to be "fully caught up" once I've read the fifth Bobiverse book that releases in a few weeks, I won't likely be able to delay the gratification for long.