Review: Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds

I’ve joined Sci-fi month, which is hosted this year by Over the Effing Rainbow and There’s Always Room for One More!  This is my first post of the month, and I’m going to try to keep up a steady stream of sci-fi reviews for November.  This review of Terminal World kicks off the month, and the continuing read-along of The Expanse, with Babylon’s Ashes, will also be a weekly feature.

Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds

Published: Ace Books/Gollancz (2010)

The Book:

“The world has been broken for longer than human memory.  Many humans live in Spearpoint, a vertical city that is striated by zones that restrict the level of functioning technology.  People are limited by these boundaries, as well, and cannot survive in zones much different from their original homes.  Quillon is an exception.  He was an ‘angel’, an advanced human that could only exist in the highest reaches of the city.  An infiltration research project gone wrong has left him living as an ordinary human in a lower zone.  

It was inevitable that his former countrymen would one day find him, and on that day he must go on the run in earnest.  His journey out of Spearpoint and through the dying wastes of the planet will introduce him to both horrors and revelations, with unexpected friends along the way.  The key to his future, and the future of his world, may lie in its past.” ~Allie

I really enjoy Alastair Reynolds’s stories, and I listened to this one on audiobook.  The narrator, John Lee, was excellent. He gave a lot of life and individuality to the various characters.

My Thoughts:

Terminal World is a departure from the usual far-future space opera that I expect from Reynolds.  Instead, it is a dying-Earth adventure story, with something of a steampunk/Mad Max aesthetic. As in these types of stories, there is not a particularly strong throughline, and the protagonist wanders through a series of encounters with different creatures and communities.  I really liked the characters, particularly the protagonist Quillon.  As a doctor and a disguised angel, he was less physically capable and more compassionate than most heroes that grace these kinds of stories.  He was balanced by his guide, a tough, pragmatic, foul-mouthed woman named Meroka.  Along the way they meet a number of other interesting people, including airship pilots, scientists, and a ‘magic child’ that surprisingly did not annoy me.

The most notable communities Quillon encounters are his home of Spearpoint and a large airship community called Swarm.  I enjoyed seeing the differences in the character of these two groups.  For instance, Spearpoint is full of webs of organized crime, secrets and dark tunnels, while Swarm has a constant focus on movement and forward momentum.  It’s not surprising that Swarm is where we see one of my favorite things--rediscovering science in a fictional world.  One of the airship leaders, Ricasso, is intent on reviving science, both for progress and to understand the origins of their world.  It was fun reading discussions on these topics, and slowly seeing how the different clues scattered through the story fit together.  Ricasso and the others are working with very limited information, though, so there’s still plenty left to speculation. These were some of my favorite parts of the book.

As much as I liked the parts about studying the past and developing science, I also enjoyed all the action and excitement that seemed to constantly find Quillon. He fled from pursuing angels into a waste filled with violent “skull boys” and organic-mechanical “carnivorgs”.  His path  wanders from one crisis to another, with intense airship battles and betrayals along the way. I felt that ending came a bit abruptly, and it did not resolve everything in a way I expected.  There is enough resolution to allow you to speculate what the future holds for Quillon and the others, so I was pretty satisfied.  It is a rather open ending, though, and it doesn’t appear that Reynolds has any plans to write a sequel.  Overall, this was an interesting world, and I would be happy if he ever decided to return to it.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Terminal World is different from the kind of story I expect from Alastair Reynolds.  Rather than space opera, this one is a dying-Earth (though not literally set on Earth) adventure.  I found the cast to be varied and interesting, and I liked the atypical hero we follow in the doctor Quillon.  The story had plenty of excitement and action, and I especially enjoyed seeing the characters attempt to methodically understand the origins and prospects for their world.  The ending was rather abrupt, but sufficient to conclude the story.  After such an entertaining book, I’m even more eager to catch up with other books of Reynolds’s that I have missed!

Review: House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

Published: Gollancz, 2008

Awards Nominated: Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Book:

“Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every two hundred thousand years, to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings. Campion and Purslane are not only late for their thirty-second reunion, but they have brought along an amnesiac golden robot for a guest.

But the wayward shatterlings get more than the scolding they expect: they face the discovery that someone has a very serious grudge against the Gentian line, and there is a very real possibility of traitors in their midst. The surviving shatterlings have to dodge exotic weapons while they regroup to try to solve the mystery of who is persecuting them, and why - before their ancient line is wiped out of existence, forever.” ~WWEnd.com

It might be impossible to guess from this blog, but I love Alastair Reynolds’s work.  I’m a huge fan of space opera in general, and it seems like Reynolds’s novels and short fiction always hit the right buttons for me.  Since his debut Revelation Space, I’d been quickly picking up each new release as soon as it came out.  Then, my reading habits were completely derailed by graduate school, and after I started this blog I somehow never had the energy to tackle the growing backlist.  I just finished reading my signed copy of House of Suns, and I have purchased copies of Terminal World and Blue Remembered Earth, so I think I’m finally ready to catch up!

My Thoughts:

  

House of Suns stretches across a wider canvas--both in time and space--than some of the other works I’ve read by Reynolds.  The shatterling main characters provide a kind of connection to human experience while simultaneously introducing a way of living that is much stranger.  They think nothing of journeys that could take tens of thousands of years, and speak casually about the rise and fall of starfaring civilizations.  With generally little to worry about in terms of resources, the purpose of their lives seems to be to experience and observe as much of the universe as possible.  Luckily, Purslane and Campion make this wide view relatable by giving weight to smaller-scale interpersonal issues: the people they like or dislike among the other shatterlings and their taboo romantic inclinations towards each other.  The ‘amnesiac golden robot’, Hesperus, is another major character that allows for emotional connection in a story set on such a large scale.  Some characters’ distrust of him and the ambiguity about his motives kept me engaged with the early story, and I was surprised by how this tied into the final reveal of the novel’s central mystery.

The story was further grounded by the intermission story of Abigail Gentian’s childhood, which eventually detailed the origins of Gentian line.  I did not pick up on the full purpose of this interlude until after I’d finished the novel, but I appreciated how it tied the identity of the shatterlings back to a more conventional human existence.  In general, I enjoyed how the novel explored the idea of self and consciousness through dramatic changes in state of being.  The shattering of Abigail Gentian’s personality is only one example--other ideas include machine intelligence and the history of the distributed consciousness of the Spirit of the Air. It was interesting to think how people with different capabilities or technology would circumvent mortality, and how they would cope with the increasing burden of memories beyond the span of an ordinary human life.

Past these introspective thoughts, the novel was also full of many big ideas that gave the story a delightful sense of wonder.  From the Vigilance to the idea of stardams, from time-manipulating technologies to chilling interrogation techniques, it seemed like there was always something new to think about.  This creativity helped to keep me interested in the universe while the main plot was progressing slowly. When the central mystery of the story eventually emerged, I thought it was well worth the long build-up. It was refreshing to read a novel where I couldn’t really tell where the story was heading, and I was satisfied with how everything came together. This ranks as one of my favorites from Alastair Reynolds, up near Chasm City.

My Rating: 5/5

It has been too long since I’ve read a novel by Alastair Reynolds, and House of Suns was an excellent first novel back.  It balances a story that spans hundreds of thousands of years and huge distances in space with characters that are easily relatable despite the drastic differences between their existence and ours.  I loved the big ideas, particularly those exploring different forms of consciousness, and the creative future technology. The pace of the story was sometimes a bit slow and meandering, but I really enjoyed the direction it took and the revelations later in the story.  This is one of my favorite of Reynolds’ novels, and I’m looking forward to reading the others I have missed!