Oct. 5th, 2010

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Chasm CityChasm City by Alastair Reynolds




I am so jaded: you read one book about plagues that eat nanotechnology, and religious experience as the result of an indoctrinal neurovirus, and the particular kind of psychosis that results from decades-long sublight space flights, you’ve read them all.



Particularly when you’ve actually read three, all by the same guy. Seriously, Alastair Reynolds, think about something else!



And this book is a mess anyway – bloated, terrible dialogue (seriously, the narrator of my audiobook did the best anyone could, and everyone still sounded like they were reading off teleprompters), oh and some deus ex alien. Reynolds generally has better gender politics, too. And he is one of the worst offenders of the ‘don’t write about how the whosit drive works, write about how it feels to use it,’ thing.



That’s too strike outs for him – I didn’t much like Century Rain either. I wonder if any of his later stuff is better edited? Or, you know, about some-fucking-thing else.





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