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Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
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Starts slowly and needs some time to get into, but then becomes quickly a very exciting book. Recommended. ( )
  dread_dragon | Oct 21, 2009 |
Starts slowly and needs some time to get into, but then becomes quickly a very exciting book. Recommended. ( )
  dread_dragon | Oct 21, 2009 |
Revelation Space is a great book, with clever ideas about technology in the distant future, and many surprises... which I won't spoil.

You have the Pattern Jugglers, that can imprint another mind on top of your own just by swimming in the waters of their home world. There's the Shrouders, who have secrets (weapons!?) kept in the equivalent of a lockbox-in-space. And the Amarantin, who mysteriously vanished a million years ago.

Spaceships have firepower capable of blowing up planets, and you can get nukes the size of a pin head. People have implants, and the implants can get computer viruses. Artificial Intelligence is a reality, allowing people to essentially become immortal by being copied into a computer.

There were weaknesses to the book, including the length - starting at an archaeology dig was unnecessary, as was the descent into Cerberus. And near the end it started to feel more like a horror novel with characters dying in gory ways.

Overall this was a very entertaining scifi novel if you can hold on until the end. ( )
  bgsu_drew | Jul 24, 2009 |
I'm torn by this book. On the positive side, it's a good story and an interesting universe. On the negative side, he write as if I'm an idiot - telling us the same thing in three or four different ways in the same paragraph and seeming to expect each time to be a revelation. Hint, if you call something a "cache-weapon" I already know it's a weapon. ( )
  penwing | Jun 13, 2009 |
Although the science and sheer epic stage this book revolves around is very interesting and imaginative, the over-written dialogue and descriptions of technologies, bantering between characters, and drawn out plot made this book drag for me. Finally, about page 600 or so it begins to explain things. It does make you wonder though. Why aren't there more known civilizations out there? Revelation Space presents one idea. I'll probably read the other 3 in the series. ( )
  jamclash | Jun 2, 2009 |
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Series (with order)
Canonical Title
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
There was a razorstorm coming in.
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Canonical titleRevelation Space
Original publication date2000
SeriesRevelation Space (1), Revelation Space Trilogy (1), Revelation Space Novels (1)
People/CharactersDan Sylveste, Ana Khouri, Illia Volyova, Pascale Sylveste, Yuuji Sajaki, Cal Sylveste (show all 8)
Important placesResurgam (planet), Nostalgia for Infinity (lighthugger ship), Yellowstone (planet), Chasm City, Yellowstone, Cerberus
Awards and honorsArthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist (2001), British Science Fiction Association Award Shortlist (2000), Locus Recommended Reading (First Novel, 2000), Guardian 1000 (Science Fiction & Fantasy)
First wordsThere was a razorstorm coming in.
Last words(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
BlurbersBaxter, Stephen, McAuley, Paul J., Wolfe, Gene, Strahan, Jonathan
Book description

Amazon.com Amazon.com's Best of 2001 (ISBN 0441009425, Paperback)

Alastair Reynolds's first novel is "hard" SF on an epic scale, crammed with technological marvels and immensities. Its events take place over a relatively short period, but have roots a billion years old--when the Dawn War ravaged our galaxy.

Sylveste is the only man ever to return alive and sane from a Shroud, an enclave in space protected by awesome gravity-warping defenses: "a folding a billion times less severe should have required more energy than was stored in the entire rest-mass of the galaxy." Now an intuition he doesn't understand makes him explore the dead world Resurgam, whose birdlike natives long ago tripped some booby trap that made their own sun erupt in a deadly flare.

Meanwhile, the vast, decaying lightship Nostalgia for Infinity is coming for Sylveste, whose dead father (in AI simulation) could perhaps help the Captain, frozen near absolute zero yet still suffering monstrous transformation by nanotech plague. Most of Infinity's tiny crew have hidden agendas--Khouri the reluctant contract assassin believes she must kill Sylveste to save humanity--and there are two bodiless stowaways, one no longer human and one never human. Shocking truths emerge from bluff, betrayal, and ingenious lies.

The trail leads to a neutron star where an orbiting alien construct has defenses to challenge the Infinity's planet-wrecking superweapons.

At the heart of this artifact, the final revelations detonate--most satisfyingly. Dense with information and incident, this longish novel has no surplus fat and seems almost too short. A sparkling SF debut. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400)

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