But a transfer of enemy hits (your successes from the spell resistance test) to your next drain test is exactly what happens. If the force of the spell remains untouched, other targets are not suddenly outside the AoE, which would have been my major concern.

that would be cool if they had said absorb hits. But they said absorb Force as 'temporary mana charge'.

As I said before, Absorb is not automatically synonymous with Reduce, and is sometimes opposed to it. The description does not specify it reduces the Force of a spell, and so it does not. If you want to run it differently, I will not argue further.

If you do decide to run it as reducing the Force directly, then in regards to AoE spells, it would reduce the Force and all derived effects (base damage, maximum hits) for you and you alone. It would not reduce the AoE. This is partially to avoid unnecessary game complications, and partially because it makes sense - you are reducing the portion of the spell affecting you. I would also strongly recommend that you have it reduce Force instead of providing Hits on your Spell Resistance; if it does both, it becomes obscenely powerful.

It is an Advanced Metamagic, they do tend to be obscenely powerful.

Happens to me all the time.

Well just to toss my two cents in, and to see if I just don't get the magic system (which I seriously doubt).

Force is the amount of energy put into a spell or rather its raw power. Absorbing Force would logically reduce said power. For Absorption not to work this way would mean that Force as a measurement of raw power would be different based on what kind of spell it is. That makes no sense whatsoever.