Furious Gulf by Gregory Benford (1994)

I found the fifth volume of the Galactic Center series less depressing than its predecessors, although Benford continues to subject his characters to extraordinary suffering and helplessness. Physics is the real spectacle: regions surrounding a black hole contain stable, separate space-time realities insulated from the tidal forces of our comparatively flat universe. Benford piles on so many PhD-thesis-level revelations that I sometimes lost sight of the characters beneath the cosmology. The book recalls Stephen Baxter at his most ambitious, particularly in its fascination with exotic physics and civilizations operating across incomprehensible scales.

The story follows the surviving humans as they struggle to navigate the increasingly bizarre environments and political conflicts of the Galactic Center while confronting powers vastly beyond their understanding. Their immediate goal is survival; their larger problem is discovering what the galaxy's mysterious powers are doing and how humanity fits into events operating on a cosmic scale.

I found the human conflicts less interesting than the increasingly strange galactic phenomena. Petty political struggles among the various human factions continue, but I have become somewhat numb to the suffering inflicted by the powerful antagonists; survival against overwhelming forces now feels more plausible because of the larger pattern of events gradually emerging. Benford reveals more about the mysterious galactic powers without dissolving their fundamental mystery, preserving the series' sense of cosmic awe. The contrived reappearance of Benford's favorite character near the conclusion disappointed me, however; the device felt less organic than the increasingly elaborate cosmological discoveries surrounding it.

4/5 Stars