Cover designs by Blacksheep and Lauren Panepinto

The Revenger series is one of the most successful SF series in recent memory. Opening novel Revenger (2017) was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and won the Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book; SFX called it “By far the most enjoyable book Reynolds has ever written.” Sequel Shadow Captain arrived last year, and quickly won over critics; the Guardian called it “A swashbuckling thriller — Pirates of the Caribbean meets Firefly.” What’s it all about? The Daily Telegraph summed up the first two volumes expertly:

Returning to the universe of Revenger, award-winning author Alastair Reynolds delivers another thrilling tale set among the stars. Two sisters ran away from home to join the crew of a spaceship. They took on pirates, faced down monsters and survived massacres… and now they’re in charge. Captaining a fearsome ship of their own, adventures are theirs for the taking — and there’s hoards to loot and treasures to find in the darkest reaches of space. But the rules are also more relaxed out on the fringes, as they’re about to discover… A rollicking adventure yarn with action, abduction, fights, properly scary hazards, very grisly torture and even ghosts of a sort.

Pirates, monsters, ghosts…. that’s a whole lot in one package. Everyone knows that all the best series come in threes, and sure enough the third volume in Alastair Reynolds’ series arrives next month. Here’s the details.

Bone Silence arrives in hardcover on April 14. Let’s start with the description.

Quoins are accepted currency throughout the thousands of worlds of the Congregation. Ancient, and of unknown origin and purpose, people have traded with them, fought for them, and stolen quoin hordes from booby-trapped caches at risk to life and limb throughout the Thirteen Occupations. Only now it’s becoming clear they have another purpose… as do the bankers who’ve been collecting them.

The Occupations themselves are another puzzle. The rise and fall of civilisation may have been unevenly spaced across history, but there is also a pattern. Could something be sparking the Occupations — or ending them? And if so, what could it be, lurking far beyond the outermost worlds of the Congregation?

The Ness sisters are being hunted for crimes they didn’t commit by a fleet whose crimes are worse than their own. If they’re to survive, and stay one step ahead of their pursuers — if they’re to answer the questions which have plagued them — it’s going to require every dirty, piratical trick in the book…

Our previous coverage of Alastair Reynolds, including the first two novels in the Revenger series, is here:

In 500 Words or Less: Revenger by Brandon Crilly
Shadow Captain
The Medusa Chronicles by Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds
Elysium Fire
Birthday Reviews: Alastair Reynolds’s “A Spy in Europa” by Steven H Silver

Bone Silence will be published by Orbit on April 14, 2020. It is 640 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $11.99 in digital formats. The cover is designed by Blacksheep and Lauren Panepinto.

See all our coverage of the best in SF and fantasy Series here.