Amazingly, my thoughts on The Recollection by Gareth L Powell are exactly the opposite of most of the reviews I’ve read. The book is a character-driven page-turner that kept me captured throughout its length. It became obvious to me that I was reading a different book. The Recollection, second addition, must be a total rewrite of the original with all the issues raised in prior reviews having been addressed, corrected, or the storyline improved. The author now has a five-star book.

In the book, two seemingly disparate stories, each action-driven, come together in a logical Sci-Fi sort of way toward the end where a final confrontation takes place against an alien end-of-times weapon. One thread takes place in near current times with the opening of planetary portals on the earth. These mysteriously appear in random locations and only lead to human habitable worlds. Few people entering the portals come back and those that immediately do return months later due to space-time differences. Most go on using interconnecting portals that they find on each world. If they don’t settle down on one of the visited planets, they continue using a portal network that ultimately leads to a technically advanced future world. The intended result of the portal network is the human habitation of the galaxy. However, who the portal builders are and the intended purpose of the portal network isn’t revealed until the end of the book.

The second thread involves the challenges and experiences of a space trader pilot and her estranged lover. After her character is developed and her fate mysteriously hinted at, she becomes the person who delivers the ultimate alien-developed countermeasure used to push back the weaponized self-replicating swarm bent on destroying all human and alien development.

While it would be satisfying to know that the swarm gets defeated, that’s not how the book ends. Humans and their peaceful alien hosts have only found a way to hold back the swarm temporarily allowing them time to escape to a nomadic habitat built by the alien hosts designed to preserve humanity by keeping it out of the swarm’s path.

The book is an excellent stand-alone novel that could also be used as the first book in a series should the author select to continue the story. Even though Amazon’s book description indicates that this is a second edition, it has linked the low-rated reviews from the previous addition to it. This is unfortunate as those reviews have become misleading with the second edition and will cause readers to hesitate when considering the April 27, 2021 addition for their next read.