Sunday, April 8, 2018

Revelation space

As you can see from my last post I've spent a lot of time reading and thinking about the Revelation Space series recently.  I've liked Alastair Reynolds since House of Suns.  I had heard that this was kind of his magnum opus but I had always been a little intimidated by the sheer number of pages involved.  I finally decided to start last October... when I saw that, after years, he was writing a sequel to The Prefect which came out in January, so I decided to hold off for a little bit.  Since there are 14 short stories and 5 novels, I'll do a series of micro reviews (in in-universe chronological order of course).  Please see the above linked post for the collections where you can find the stories.

[I'll try to avoid character level spoilers but event level spoilers are going to be hard to avoid]

"Great Wall of Mars": This story is a great introduction to all the factions that are tearing apart the solar system at the beginning of the series.  It really feels like you are in media res and there could easily be another story before this but Reynold's story telling is such that you can happily make do with what you have.

"Glacial": This one is basically a thought experiment/murder mystery with the characters from the previous story. Stories like this are basically why I read Alastair Reynolds.  It has a totally unique idea and weaves it into an interesting story.

"Night Passage": A totally distinct set of characters with a little bit of a haunted house story.  Again, Reynolds' understanding of astrophysics shines here as he does some things (believably) that I wouldn't have even thought of.

"A Spy in Europa": Reynolds' version of a spy thriller.  It is an interesting idea but I think that it is less well executed than some of the others.

"Weather": One part love story, one part pirate story, one part mystery this story is less concerned with ideas (though it has several) and more with the characters.  The relationships and interactions all feel very true to life.

The Prefect: This is definitely my favorite novel in the series.  It shows what human culture could achieve with, as Reynolds describes it, "Democratic Anarchy".  Everyone is voting all the time through implants in their skulls.  This combines it with a noir detective thriller where the technology is not just a sideshow, but an integral part of the story.

"Open and Shut": Basically just a check in with the main characters of The Prefect in the aftermath of the story.  If you've read the story, it is a nice stop over between it and the sequel but nothing special by itself.

Elysium Fire: The sequel to The Prefect, another detective story.  This one isn't quite as good, but it is still very good while doing a great job building on the events of the story, showing how they affect our main characters and the world around them.

"Monkey Suit": A ship fleeing a disaster and our narrator has to go out in a refurbished spacesuit.  It's an interesting story about what happens as we give all of our appliances even rudimentary personalities

"Dilation Sleep": To be honest, I barely remember this story.  It's one of the earliest written stories in the series and it shows.  It is basically an exploration of how wealthy can fly around at near the speed of light to avoid current problems.

Chasm City: This is Alastair Reynolds tries to write Phillip K. Dick.  It feels a lot like Minority Report, Total Recall, or Paycheck.  Lots of interesting things with memory and mistaken identity.  It's an interesting story of how far the mighty can fall.

"Diamond Dogs": Alastair Reynolds does Saw or maybe just a puzzle room.  Basically a story that asks how much it is worth sacrificing to achieve goals.

"Grafenwalder's Bestiary": This has similar themes to "Diamond Dogs" with people in the upper echelons competing to own the rarest animals.  It's an interesting epilogue to both that story and "A Spy in Europa".

"Turquoise Days": Alastair Reynolds' take on a vastly different alien life than ours.  It's an interesting idea about how much of our thought processes are recordable and what people would do with that capacity.

"Nightingale": This story covers the aftermath of the historical parts of Chasm City and is the closest we get to a true horror story (a room with walls of skin!).  This story makes me wonder if Reynolds is a pessimist about war and the costs of peace.

Revelation Space: We made it, the "first" book in the series!  This book won Reynolds a bunch of awards and it is easy to see why.  It is jam packed with interesting ideas and characters.  It ties together a bunch of threads and ideas that have been built up in the other stories, while still letting readers who started here be able to follow the action.  It also does some interesting things jumping around in the timeline to make sure that both stories hit the climax at the same time.

"The Last Log of the Lachrimosa": A spooky story where lust for treasure gets the better of a crew.  It does some interesting things with perspective though, to make a mystery within the story.

Redemption Ark: Hope you read "Great Wall of Mars"!  Those characters make their appearance into the main storyline like a hammerblow.  They are suddenly, and for the rest of the series, very important.  Despite that, it's another really enjoyable book and has some of the best space battles of the series.

Absolution Gap: I know a lot of digital ink has been spilled over how this book is not as good as the others, and I fully respect those opinions and see where they are coming from.  However, I really enjoyed this book.  Once the plot finally gets going, which takes a while, it has a lot of interesting moral dilemmas for the characters.

"Galactic North": This story goes from near the beginning of the timeline to the very end concerning a cycle of revenge between two former friends.  It has what I consider to be almost a Reynolds cliche which is two ships chasing each other at very near the speed of light for an extremely extended period of time (due to relativity).  It is a nice little coda to the story, showing that humanity always finds a way to persevere.

Overall, I'd highly recommend the series.  The quality is, of course, a little variable but it is a chock full of great ideas and fun characters.