Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

[lightreads]

Humans of the twenty-sixth century live in a galaxy more empty than it really should be, haunted by the ghosts of species long extinct. There's 550 pages of intricate plotting here, so I'll just say it's a hard SF novel that jumps from an archaeological expedition to an alien plague to quantum mechanics to neuroprogramming.

The good: Women! who are cool! and who do very cool things! Shiny hard SF ideas. A scattering of really disturbing and effective images that will stick with me. Excellent and creative worldbuilding.

The meh: Choppy timing. A few stupid writer tricks. Over-stretched dramatics.

I think hard SF is like a gecko. I'm like, "ooh, you're an awfully cool little reptile, aren't you?" and it totally is, but at a certain point I start thinking, "you know, my dog is nice and furry. I like furry." Which is an overtired way of saying that I enjoyed this book and will be getting the sequel, but it suffers from the perennial hard SF problem -- characters who are so futurified, there's very little to latch onto.

But really good, for hard SF -- definitely my favorite of the recent reads (Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear, etc). Also see above re: women, because that really can't be over-emphasized.

Comments

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

Ok, so I know this book was published first, but people have often told me to read CHASM CITY first in this series because it's a prequel, even though it was published one year later.

Thoughts?

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Dunno exactly -- I haven't read Chasm City -- but I do know I coud definitely follow this book, even though there were hints at backstory I didn't entirely get. It seems like one of those very dense universes where the books layer both up and down, if you know what I mean.

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

Cool. Thanks. :)

[readerjane]

I love that metaphor. Makes me want to come up with a whole zoology of genres. *g*