Rating: 
Summary: Smart and readable first novel.
Review: I had some difficulty getting into the book because of the time-shifting. But once in, I was hooked. Reynolds has a vivid imagination and a great eye for detail. I bought his view of the Ultra spacefarers and liked the way he populated his book with anti-heros.Why not five stars? The ending had a lot of aspects that were simply too pat. It was good, but somehow missed that step into great. I'll be looking forward to reading his next novel, however.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Long
Review: I have been waiting to discover an heir to Arthur C. Clarke's mantle for some time. Reynolds almost made it. The problem is, his book is just way too long. It would have been an outstanding read at about 200 pages. At almost 500 pages you have plenty of time to get bogged down and to become disenchanted. There was too much unneeded detail, detail that demonstrated a vivid imagination but did not contribue to the entertainment value of the novel. What happened to the 160 page gems that Clarke used to write. Is this a lost art. Two trends I deplore in modern science fiction writing: the tendency toward ponderous, verbose novels and the pre-occupation in their pages with political intrigue and factional infighting. This novel is touched by both of these to varying degrees.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written and thoroughly enjoyable!
Review: With Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds' first novel, he aims high and hits the target almost dead on. It's a rarity these days to find an author capable of combining hard science fiction with good storytelling, but if this book demonstrates anything, it's that Reynolds is just such an author. And even more impressive, he does it on a grand scale, weaving together events that take place light-years and decades (and even centuries) apart. I won't bother to outline the story here - I'm sure plenty of other reviewers have already done that. What I will say is that the author places his characters against the backdrop of human existence several centuries from now, when interstellar space has been colonized, trade ships spend decades plying the space between starts, and human beings exist in a variety of forms, from highly modified cybernetic beings to artificial simulations based on brain scans of the dead. Yet even on such a grand stage, the characters are never lost - Sylveste, Khouri and Volyova are each strong enough to hold their own, and even if you never find yourself caring about them, you will want to keep reading to learn of their fates. The story is well written and very engaging, and despite the fact that it lost some momentum in the middle, I found myself eagerly turning pages to find out what would happen next. All in all, though this is not quite a perfect sci-fi novel, it comes close - and definitely deserves five stars! I would recommend it without hesitation to any fan of hard science fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Too complicated for some(me)
Review: This was a very interesting book, but it took me seemingly forever to get it read. It's really laborious. The author jumps around much too much and trys to get too way out for me. I could not keep all the ends together. And it didn't seem to have an ending. The following book, Chasm City, I thought was to be a sequel, which I don't care much for, but that turned out to be not the case. In any event, I think the austhor has a lot of promise and future books should be better.
Rating:
Summary: Very inventive sci-fi!
Review: I'm not going to write a lengthy review with spoilers; there are plenty of them here already, so it wouldn't matter much. Just know that this book is very worth reading and buy it, you won't be sorry!
Rating:
Summary: I Knew This One Would Be Good...
Review: Heading into this book I had heard a lot of good things about it...but none of it firsthand...so even though I was fairly sure I would like this book I still had some doubt. Very early on all doubt was squelched. This book is fantastic. A space opera in the truest sense of the word...spanning across light-years of space. I've read quite a bit of SciFi and there are several ideas in this book that are, if not totally unique, used in ways that I've never seen before. This book is definitely worth the time spent on it...you'll come away eager for more of Alastair Reynolds's work.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting cosmic mystery.
Review: I just love galaxy-spanning novels, space -archaeology and cosmic mysteries.
Here you find all this, beautifully written in a gothic post-cyberpunk style. In my opinion the flaw of the book is that none of the characters is in the least appealing. The two main personae are obsessed egotistic zealots that would breezily commit genocide to achieve their ends. And the others aren't much better. Also, the novel is overlong, as usual whit most of today's Science-Fiction and Fantasy production. Still, it's an interesting read whit good ideas, and an intriguing alien equivalent of a biblical myth that would interest the writer Storm Constantine, whose gothic style is similar to Reynold's.
My vote would be thus 3 and a half. Interesting, but not as the Night Dawn's Trilogy of Peter F. Hamilton.
Rating:
Summary: superb
Review: Space opera at it's very best. Good going!
Rating:
Summary: At the top of space opera
Review: It seems that in the last decade space opera has acquired many new important authors.
The problem with most of them is that they feel they have to rely on metaphysics to create a problem that the entire galaxy has to be involved (You don't create a space opera over some petty theft!).
But no. Not Reynolds. He create a problem (Did I say ONE problem?) of galactic proportions. He does not rely on love (Simmons-Hyperion), or evil (Hamilton-Reality Dysfunction) or whatever metaphysical instrument.
He keeps his science straight. It is a full featured science fiction work describing a word that could be. I can easily see how human beings went from here-today to there-then.
I read the first part of the book a little faster than I should because I did not realize his style. When reading you have to keep in your mind all the data he gives. They (problems you did not really realize they where problems) are coming back later when you least expect it to get resolved (a small spoiler: so the father was not lost, he was sold but he does not seem to mind).
Rating:
Summary: Hard SF with more than one twist
Review: Reynolds provides an engrossing, fast-paced tale that keeps you reading through the nearly 600 pages. The plot twists are labarynthine but for the most part remain believable. The characters have the typical post-modern combination of likeable and not-so-likeable traits that have the reader cheering them on at one moment and recoiling from them at another. There's certainly no lack of imagination here, as Reynolds brings together exotic astrophysics, cybernetics, and literature in a engaging blend of enjoyable SF.
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