Revelation Space

Rating:
Summary: amazing and absorbing
Review: I take issue with those who say that Reynolds can't write or is unimaginative. It's amazing writing, and one of the most creative books I've read in some time. The style is highly literate (even if your vocab is large you may learn a word or two). And every page contains at least one technology, circumstance, or invention so fascinating and unexpected that you'll have to stop and read the section over again.

Yes, Reynolds does use semicolons when he should be using commas, dashes, or periods. It's a stylistic choice, though. Anyone who can string a sentence together as well as this guy certainly knows punctuation protocol. Think of his semicolon usage as a far-future convention. A forthcoming change in 'the rules.' It's a pretty flexible little mark anyway, and people love to take license with it.

His writing is definitely on par with that of Dan Simmons--it's just colder. The story demands it. Revelation Space is a lonely, dark, and chilling book. The characters are fully developed and complicated people, but the tone of the book is such that most of them have some kind of a defensive wall around themselves. Not so different from modern society, a lot of the time. Here, it's taken to the extreme, as the plot revolves around deception and hidden agendas.

This book is tight. And very, very complex. I put Reynolds up there with Simmons and Robert Charles Wilson--writers whose authorial abilities are as interesting as the stories themselves.

Rating:
Summary: Great ideas in a mediocre book
Review: I'm a long time SF reader and am always on the look out for great new books. I stumbled across this one and it looked promising. I REALLY wanted to like it. Alastair Reynolds has put a lot of thought into this far-flung future universe, and he has come up with some stunning technical ideas. The plot is fantastic and the ending is great! However, the reader has to wade through hundreds of pages to find these great ideas and ultimately come to fantastical conclusion. I'm not sure why SF writers these days need to have SO MUCH exposition in their books and churn out mini-episodes that do nothing to further the plot (are you reading this Tad Williams?). Reynolds just needs a good, strong editor. This book could have been GREAT had it been reduced to, say, 300 pages rather than the almost 600.

Reynolds tries to keep us in suspense by delaying answers to puzzling riddles foisted onto the characters. But it doesn't work! I easily figured out the mysteries LONG BEFORE the characters do. And when the characters finally figure the mysteries out, or the writer, who artificially created suspense by delaying the explanation to the reader, finally gives us the explanation - IT IS NO LONGER SUSPENSFUL. I just sighed and thought FINALLY we've got that behind us. It is my opinion that Reynolds could have upped the suspense by delivering the punch lines FASTER.

Crispness is what is needed here. The book starts out this way and it finishes this way. In between, however, it is like quicksand as the characters slog their way through the plot.

And speaking of the characters, they are fairly interesting but a bit wooden. There is a major streak of droll cynicism running through everyone's personality and nothing seems to phase them much. They're still wisecracking and fairly unmoved even when faced with imminent death and/or when mysteries of the universe are unfolding before their eyes. I guess, thousands of years from now, everyone will be like this.

But let me say that in the end, I liked the book. The final 50 or so pages really make up for the tiresome middle. I recommend it if you are a fast reader and are very patient.

Rating:
Summary: disappointingly uncreative and poorly written
Review: I really, really wanted to like it. I love hard sci fi, and Reynolds is a PhD. And I love time-spanning past/future space yarns.

But this was a pale imitation of Benford's superior "Galactic Center" six-book series -- it pretty much told the same story of a cocky explorer and how his discovery of an odd set of alien artifacts led to a major threat to human civilization and a solution to the riddle of why there is so little other intelligent life in the galaxy. I'll leave it at that to avoid giving it all away.

Also, the writing was odd and, at times, poor. I can accept cool sci fi stories that aren't Hemingway -- Steven Baxter, for example, tells tales as good as Benford's, just with clumsier writing. But Reynolds has some strange and flat-out incorrct habits, like using semicolons where he should be using commas.

In short, stick to Benford, Baxter, or Greg Bear for your space and hard sci fi needs. It's one thing for a prolific author to eventually/occasionally produce something derivatve, but when your first book is pretty darned uncreative, that's a bad sign for your writing career. At least he has a PhD to fall back on.

Rating:
Summary: Very uneven, though entertaining
Review: I am conflicted by this book. On the one hand, Reynolds brilliantly imagines far-future human societies (like the genetically modified space-faring Ultras), giant, intelligent spaceships (like the miles-long Nostalgia For Infinity, partially taken over by a virus that feeds on computers), ancient alien races, and all the necessary technology to make these believable. In the hands of a better writer, the components - the content - of this book would be downright incredible.
However, Reynolds is not a good writer. His characters exist merely to move the story forward. I don't think any of the main three could seriously be called "heroes". It doesn't matter to me that they're all working against each other at certain times, but none of them ever seems real enough. Sylveste is a slightly egomaniacal scientist obsessed with uncovering the mystery of the disappearance of a race of aliens thousands of years ago. Ana Khouri is a mercenary hired by a mysterious stranger to kill Sylveste. Volyova is the commander (sort of) of a giant starship (mentioned above) that is also searching for Sylveste, because she needs his help. Beyond that, they are interchangeable. Only their motivations differ - they speak in the exact same voice, and their actions are hardly distinctive. You wouldn't recognize these characters if you happened to meet them anywhere else; they're just plot devices, and that is incredibly irritating.
The book takes about 200 pages too much in getting its plot worked out. It's very long, and I'm not sure how much of that length is really essential to the whole. Reynolds spends a lot of time with flashbacks - not important ones, just brief ones to tell you what a character was doing ten minutes before he/she was doing something else. Utterly superfluous. Another problem is his consistent use of passive sentences - even when there was intense action going on, it didn't feel intense. Instead of writing "Khouri walked down the hall", Reynolds writes "Khouri WAS walking down the hall." The overuse of the passive voice robs the story of immediacy and action.
Overall, I enjoyed this book, though on an entirely conceptual level. It was a painful chore to read (you have to make it to the last few pages before he explains the specifics of his plot), and I don't think I'll bother with the sequels.

Rating:
Summary: Dark Space Opera!
Review: I just got done reading in my humble opinion the best sf novel of the year,Revelation Space. Reynolds has estabished himself with this grand and mostly chilling space opera set in the 26th century.He has the ability to tell diverse storylines and have them come together in cohensive and gripping fashion.Dan Sylveste, a obessive scientist on the colony world of Resurgam seeks to find the answers for why the planet's original inhabitants,the Amarantins a avian race was wiped out eons ago. But Sylveste doesn't know it but he and his simulation of his dead, father calvin are being seek by cyborg crew of starship Nostalgia for Infinity to cure their captain who suffers from nanotech plague.Sylveste isn't aware that one of the crew,a lady assasin, Khouri is contracted to kill him!The tension of this novel is so palpable you can almost cut it with the knife.Reynolds also knows his plot twists, as he illustrates that in the future technology changes but human nature doens't as he gives scenes of machivellian manuvers among the crew of Nostlagia.Characters in this epic novel also are not what they appear to be like the brave and sometimes ruthless Volyoya who seeks to save her captain from the nanotech plague. Khouri the assasin who must kill Sylveste in order to be reunited with her husband.The deadly Sajaki who agendas on the ship no one knows.Reynolds how to create memorable worlds and aliens like engimatic intelligence called the Shroud and how those who enters it are changed. The atmosphere of the creepy ship, Nostlagia very memorable as the crew battle each other and deadly stowaway called Sun Stealer.Reynolds also gives a answer why there are few intelligent civilizations found in the universe.the reason will terrify you!The author's ability in universe-building puts him in the same league as David Brin, Greg Bear, and frank herbert as he tells a epic saga that transcences space and billions of years in the history of the universe.Reynolds also knows how tell a story with hars science in a way that doesn't confuse the reader or take away from the human element of story.Reynolds knows how write action sequences as he describes in relish as the ship battles the defenses of the machine planet,Cerberus and terrifying escape from the menace of the Sun Stealer.This was the best space opera I've read since Peter Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series and bodes well for Reynolds future in the genre!

Rating:
Summary: disappointingly uncreative and poorly written
Review: I really, really wanted to like it. I love hard sci fi, and Reynolds is a PhD. And I love time-spanning past/future space yarns.

But this was a pale imitation of Benford's superior "Galactic Center" six-book series -- it pretty much told the same story of a cocky explorer and how his discovery of an odd set of alien artifacts led to a major threat to human civilization and a solution to the riddle of why there is so little other intelligent life in the galaxy. I'll leave it at that to avoid giving it all away.

Also, the writing was odd and, at times, poor. I can accept cool sci fi stories that aren't Hemingway -- Steven Baxter, for example, tells tales as good as Benford's, just with clumsier writing. But Reynolds has some strange and flat-out incorrct habits, like using semicolons where he should be using commas.

In short, stick to Benford, Baxter, or Greg Bear for your space and hard sci fi needs. It's one thing for a prolific author to eventually/occasionally produce something derivatve, but when your first book is pretty darned uncreative, that's a bad sign for your writing career. At least he has a PhD to fall back on.

Rating:
Summary: Wheels within wheels within wheels...
Review: This story is great, detailed, complex and a wonderful first book by ANY standards. The author's novel reminds me of works from such greats, such as Frank Herbert, Steven Brust and C.S.Friedman. Alien yet familiar, with real characters, full of plans, fears, merits and flaws. Who is the puppet and who is the master, becomes just one of the questions that starts to form in the mind while reading this book. This is a work, not just of the pen, but of a highly skilled mind, crafted carefully with the tools of the English language and with love of the science fiction setting itself. Plots within plots within plots, in a universe so will formed, with characters so well designed, with events so well timed, that you won't know what's going to really happen till the last page.
And he has more books out there!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I was excited after reading the positive reviews for this book, and after reading the first few pages. But by page 150 I realized that I no longer cared what happened next. The characters are incredibly dull and one-dimensional. I also was frustrated by the fact that there seemed to be no logic in what the author chose to describe at length, versus what was hardly described at all. Relatively unimportant objects where described in detail, while more important objects were hardly described or explained at all. Skip this one.

Rating:
Summary: One of the finest space operas ever written
Review: Alastair Reynold's "Revelation Space" is an engrossing, thoughtful space opera which is as splendidly conceived, and as nearly as well written as Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" saga. Reynold's literary debut is a fresh, invigorating look at alien contact - as seen through the lens of the archaeology of extinct alien civilizations - and the passions which consume archaeologist Dan Sylvestre in seeking to find the answer to what happened to the Amarantin - the extinct bird-like alien civilization that was on the verge of spaceflight - on the planet Resurgam. It has one of the most unique spins on first contact and cybernetics that I've come across. With the notable exception of Sylvestre, the cast of characters may seem a bid cold, if not foreboding, to the reader. Yet this novel is such a splendid, engrossing read, that you will be caught up with the individual sagas of all of the major characters, not only Sylvestre. This fine novel marks the debut of one of our most important science fiction writers, period.

Rating:
Summary: Started very well, but lost momentum
Review: The first three hundred pages of this book are excellent and feature some brilliant narrative descriptions. Reynolds captures the feel of a dark, gothic future-world with ease, creating the sort of atmosphere reminiscent of 'Blade Runner' - that is, steam coming up from the vents, big advertisements featuring Asian geishas, and giant street based markets.

Reynolds' focuses on three characters - Khouri, a mercenary; Sylveste, a scientist; and Volyova, a mystery woman on board an enormous ship of devastating power. The characters are dealt with separately, and it is only until they come together that the book starts to lose its hold on the reader. The action thereafter becomes stationary and the narrative momentum really slows down, especially so in pages 300-400, and the climax is slightly underwhelming given the extensive build up towards it.

It's a well written book from a guy who obviously knows his stuff and knows it well. He writes like a scientist who's swallowed a dictionary. If you have either a) a limited vocabulary or b) no knowledge of science, chemistry or physics, this might be a bit of a hard nut to crack for you.