This is a decent hard science fiction novel falling stylistically somewhere between Peter F. Hamilton and Iain M. Banks though, to be honest, the ending is a bit of a deus ex machina letdown. Still, the writing is compelling and after a beginning made complex by switching between three subplots separated by time as well as space smoothed out, a definite page turner.
REVELATION SPACE* was the first (published) novel from Alastair Reynolds and he’s written (at least) six more novels and an assortment of shorter pieces in the same universe, three novels and two novellas sequels to this and the others simply set in the same mileau. Fortunately for me, RS is also the recommended starting point and I’ll probably try and grab the next two books from the library (all they have).
The story is five hundred years from now and humanity has spread through a sphere about 100 lightyears across, albeit slowly since they’ve not found a means to surpass the speed of light. Some people, years before this point, did follow the curve through a Singularity and spun out some decent tech to the rest (e.g. the engines capable of near lightspeed travel, life extension technology and a few other goodies) but at least in this volume have mostly passed beyond the ken of our characters.
What, you ask, about aliens? Numerous worlds have been found that once held sentient, sophisticated life but with a couple of very strange exceptions none still live. Both exceptions, the Pattern Jugglers and the Amarantin, play important but indirect parts in this story. However, the Pattern Jugglers are more like biological machines, which scan minds and transform them on request based on capabilities or knowledge scanned previously (yes, a copy is kept), and the Amarantin are an extinct avian species. A third species, the Shrouders, may or may not still remain among the living but because no one has passed through the perfect barriers (i.e., shrouds) that enclose numerous large volumes of space and returned sane this cannot be answered.
Don’t worry, alien races play a major, mostly indirect, part. Reynolds gives us three point of view characters.
Dan Sylveste is an eminent scientist who lead an expedition to the Amarantin home world 30 years ago and is still the political leader of the colony world. As a teenager, he spoke regularly with the one man who lived after passing through a shroud and then Sylveste ventured into that same shroud, returning with no overt knowledge but an overwhelming urge to investigate that planet.
Ana Khouri was a soldier on a planet called Skye’s Edge and, through an alleged clerical error, was shipped to another planet called Yellowstone (Sylveste’s home world, but he’d already established the colony) where she found a calling as a contract assassin. That is, people ready to die or arrogantly believing themselves capable of beating a pro contracted her to try and kill them and she was mostly successful.
Ilia Volyova is a triumvir of the lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity (a kilometers-long, centuries old interstellar tradeship). The captain has been confined to cryogenic storage for decades due to illness and Volyova is at odds with the other two members of the cabal that runs the ship in his absence, and doesn’t have great relations with the two lesser crewmembers. (Yes, this ship could hold tens of thousands comfortably but that’s not how traders do things.) The vessel also has a mysterious cache of superweapons, acquired before Ilia joined the crew and though she’s in charge of them doesn’t know their source nor what most do, exactly, except that the least can destroy good size cities from orbit without breaking a sweat.
These three of course eventually come together. Khouri has been planted on the Nostalgia by a mysterious woman when it comes to port at Yellowstone, though Volyova believes she’s shanghaied her. Khouri was given little choice, either way, not to mention her ‘benefactor’ has implanted a beta, a sophisticated personality simulation of herself which can communicate but not control, inside the assassin’s brain.
The triumvirate thought Sylveste was still on Yellowstone–communication is no faster than the vessels–but move on to his colony world because they’re convinced he is the only person capable of healing their captain since he did it decades before when the disease was no as advanced.
Not everyone on the Amarantin planet remained convinced of Sylveste’s thesis, though; 20 years before (approximately the same time when Khouri earned her assassin cred) a chunk of the team rebelled, captured the ship which had carried them to Resurgam and left. Bad enough, but as the book opens political opponents who agreed with the rebels but remained behind overthrow and arrest him, having decided that as long as they have to stay the planet ought to be terraformed and made comfortable.
A couple of decades pass as the ship travels to Resurgam (most of the crew spends most of that in cold sleep) and Sylveste remains under house arrest until his captors are themselves pushed out in a coup that occurs as Sylveste is about to marry his deposer’s daughter. But then the ship arrives, making a convincing threat with those weapons unless he’s turned over.
Thinking back, despite the quality and creativity of his prose, Reynolds probably should have trimmed back the events I’ve just described substantially; a hundred pages, give or take, would’ve sufficed and likely removed the temporal confusion mentioned at the top as well. This first 250 pages (of this paperback edition’s 580) serves only to set up the main action and develop the key characters. The remainder is some really good, unpredictable action.
No huge complaints, I mentioned plans to read the following volumes of the saga, and certainly this is an impressive debut novel.
recommended
Note: Apparently Reynolds prefers that the title be printed as all caps, or at least that’s how it appears in every instance on his website.
BillSaysThis 