Purgatory Mount, Adam Roberts
Purgatory Mount, Adam Roberts
33 Rating(s)
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Purgatory Mount

Author: Adam Roberts

Narrator: Katherine Fenton, William Hope

Unabridged: 12 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Gollancz

Published: 02/04/2021

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction


Synopsis

An interstellar craft is decelerating after its century-long voyage. Its destination is V538 Aurigae ?, a now-empty planet dominated by one gigantic megastructure, a conical mountain of such height that its summit is high above the atmosphere. The ship's crew of five hope to discover how the long-departed builders made such a colossal thing, and why: a space elevator? a temple? a work of art? Its resemblance to the mountain of purgatory lead the crew to call this world Dante.

In our near future, the United States is falling apart. A neurotoxin has interfered with the memory function of many of the population, leaving them reliant on their phones as makeshift memory prostheses. But life goes on. For Ottoline Barragão, a regular kid juggling school and her friends and her beehives in the back garden, things are about to get very dangerous, chased across the north-east by competing groups, each willing to do whatever it takes to get inside Ottoline's private network and recover the secret inside.

Purgatory Mount, Adam Roberts's first SF novel for three years, combines wry space opera and a fast-paced thriller in equal measure. It is a novel about memory and atonement, about exploration and passion, and like all of Roberts's novels it's not quite like anything else.

Shortlisted for the 2021 BSFA award for Best Novel!

About Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts is commonly described as one of the UK's most important writers of SF. He is the author of numerous novels and literary parodies. He is Professor of 19th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, London University and has written a number of critical works on both SF and 19th Century poetry. He is a contributor to the SF ENCYCLOPEDIA.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Grey

Do you like Dante's Inferno? Would you like to read reflective criticism of Inferno disguised as high concept science fiction? If you do, then boy do I have approximately one tenth of a book for you. Purgatory Mount is a rather strange novel that mashes together the themes of three of Roberts' earlie......more

This is a strange SF novel by British writer Adam Roberts. I read it as a part of monthly reading for May 2022 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. This book is nominated for the British SF Association Award in 2022, the author has already won the award three times, but the last two – in 2......more

Goodreads review by Susanna

Purgatory Mount is a complex and philosophical science fiction novel one would expect from a professor of English literature. It’s also a terrifying image of near future USA and an imaginative vision of far future of the humanity. This is not a simple read. It presupposes a working knowledge of Dante......more


Quotes

Brilliantly structured, bursting with ideas, and entirely its own thing. Very highly recommended James Bradley

Purgatory Mount is mind-blowing. Adrian Tchaikovsky

This novel deals with the upsetting and catastrophic consequences of war and amnesia/ memory loss diseases, whilst playfully pointing out contemporary human dependency on technology and mobile phones. Roberts has blown me away The Fantasy Hive