So, by this stage in reading the books the first time around I had started to buy them in the larger format paper back. As an impoverished student before the days of Amazon, this is quite significant. Once again the thread of the story is not tightly tied to the previous book, though this time we hark back more to the first book, and get to spend some more time with the Nostalgia for Infinity and friends. Of course, by now much has happened with the inhibitors and they're starting to really make their presence felt after being prodded by young Sylveste.
In a parallel thread we get to meet some of the clever folks who made much of the travel in these books possible - the Conjoiners. However, it turns out (and this is just cool) that they only really learned how to do much of the clever stuff that they do by sending themselves back messages from the future. Go figure. So we discover that these people have known about the inhibitors for a while now, and some of them have even been making plans.
One big disappointment I found the first time around and I find again: huge chunks of the story are missing. Now, in fairness, they are probably not needed for the story to hang together and really they probably wouldn't add much, but it still feels wrong for them to not be in there. Still, a damn good read, about to embark on #4.
Monday, 23 August 2010
SF: Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds (re-read)
A follow-up if not a sequel to Revelation Space - this time though it's mostly about the lives of an incidental character from the previous book, and also introduces the main theme for the series from a different perspective. Yes, the text in this sentence is correct - nothing like being postmortal.
The story takes place in parallel, in three centuries with three different threads interleaved to form a much more substantial tale - which really challenges the idea of one character having one identity. The story starts in the middle, working forward in the main text and backwards through dreams & memories - and fits together better than this sounds. Turns out that the main character is a truly nasty piece of work, and we discover what the edge was that Sky must have had.
This begins to really introduce much more detail of what Chasm City life is like, and how the folks are getting on now their lovely technology isn't quite so healthy, in a watch-you-don't-get-trapped-in-a-mutating-building kind of way.
It occurs to me that in some ways these stories are similar to the "Cities in Flight" series - apparently unrelated tales which are linked as part of a bigger story. However, in this case they are linked though a small number of characters. It's interesting when you compare this with Peter F Hamilton's style, of a cast of thousands all intertwined through 3000+ pages of book. It's odd - here I am writing about other books, but AJR I guess can't be summed up in a few words. A good read, and have just finished the sequel.
The story takes place in parallel, in three centuries with three different threads interleaved to form a much more substantial tale - which really challenges the idea of one character having one identity. The story starts in the middle, working forward in the main text and backwards through dreams & memories - and fits together better than this sounds. Turns out that the main character is a truly nasty piece of work, and we discover what the edge was that Sky must have had.
This begins to really introduce much more detail of what Chasm City life is like, and how the folks are getting on now their lovely technology isn't quite so healthy, in a watch-you-don't-get-trapped-in-a-mutating-building kind of way.
It occurs to me that in some ways these stories are similar to the "Cities in Flight" series - apparently unrelated tales which are linked as part of a bigger story. However, in this case they are linked though a small number of characters. It's interesting when you compare this with Peter F Hamilton's style, of a cast of thousands all intertwined through 3000+ pages of book. It's odd - here I am writing about other books, but AJR I guess can't be summed up in a few words. A good read, and have just finished the sequel.
SF: The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks (re-read)
A culture novel, and from a certain point of view Banks' finest (sounds like a kind of ale.) For a change, no time is spent on amusing ship names and interactions, it's all about the one character and some sneaky machinations from Contact / Special Circumstances - and a game. Gripping is certainly the word for it.
We start with a bored player of - you have guessed it - games. He rules. Win's em all but doesn't know where to go with it. Some of the more sneaky folks in Contact, Special Circumstances, have a cunning plan (it turns out) and suggest he goes to play a new game.
Oh, and the commute's a bit of a killer - it's in the SMC, in the empire of Azad. The games called Azad, and the empire literally revolves around it. Our hero gets on OK with it - enough to surprise the locals, but does kinda run out of steam. Then he get's a less than gentle prod to get more of an idea of Azad and hence more of an idea of what the game's about.
You get some echoes of this in The Algebraist, but it's not a patch on this one.
We start with a bored player of - you have guessed it - games. He rules. Win's em all but doesn't know where to go with it. Some of the more sneaky folks in Contact, Special Circumstances, have a cunning plan (it turns out) and suggest he goes to play a new game.
Oh, and the commute's a bit of a killer - it's in the SMC, in the empire of Azad. The games called Azad, and the empire literally revolves around it. Our hero gets on OK with it - enough to surprise the locals, but does kinda run out of steam. Then he get's a less than gentle prod to get more of an idea of Azad and hence more of an idea of what the game's about.
You get some echoes of this in The Algebraist, but it's not a patch on this one.
Crikey time flies
Bit behind with this - have had a couple of reviews as draft which I should really get finished... guess that this is the real make or break point for any blog. Well, let's try to make it rather than break it...
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