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Revelation Space (Revelation Space #1)

by Alastair Reynolds

3.96 · Rating Details · 27,234 Ratings · 1,173 Reviews

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starshi ...more

Mass Market Paperback, 585 pages

Published May 28th 2002 by Ace Books (first published March 2000)

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Sep 07, 2011 mark monday rated it liked it

Shelves: futuristik

i suppose you could call Alastair Reynolds the Bad Twin of Peter Hamilton. both write space operas that come complete with mind-boggling concepts, galaxy-spanning adventures, bizarre aliens, space politics, love stories, and eons-old mysteries. but Hamilton writes about a future that despite having its ups, downs, and various inequities, is mainly Bright & Shiny, full of possibility. on the other hand, Reynolds' interests arise from the basic idea that the universe is a cold, scary place, fu i suppose you could call Alastair Reynolds the Bad Twin of Peter Hamilton. both write space operas that come complete with mind-boggling concepts, galaxy-spanning adventures, bizarre aliens, space politics, love stories, and eons-old mysteries. but Hamilton writes about a future that despite having its ups, downs, and various inequities, is mainly Bright & Shiny, full of possibility. on the other hand, Reynolds' interests arise from the basic idea that the universe is a cold, scary place, full of dead things and barely-understood terrors. Hamilton's characters run the gamut of loveable to outright villainous; Reynolds prefers to write mainly about self-absorbed killers and assholes. one writes about factions of humanity trying to come together to fight off threats; the other depicts humans turning on each other and how things fall apart. so i guess it depends on your perspective: do you want your space opera glass to be half-full or half-empty?

overall, i think this is a pretty good first novel. it is certainly an elephantine one; fortunately, the size didn't seem unecessary and i was aborbed by the ideas and narrative from beginning to end. Reynolds' background as a scientist is evident in spades, and i'm happy to report that my right-brained self didn't suffer at all when reading this - concepts were explained carefully and clearly, in a way that didn't make me feel particularly stupid and never felt didactic or condescending. characterization is certainly striking - if you are looking for characters that are charming or sympathetic or likeable, look away! you will not find that here. instead prepare to read about insanely arrogant scientists, vicious politicians, cold-blooded killers, and even more cold-blooded spaceship crews. it can get a bit oppresive at times.

there is an interesting theme that slowly rises up through the narrative: the obsessive-compulsive nature of humanity. this is depicted within a military mind-set that views all outsiders as potential threats and a scientific mind-set that views exploring even the most awful and potentially threatening of things as the only option. characters in this novel don't just live with their obsessions, they are defined by them. characters don't make decisions based on anything resembling empathy or humanism - they are compelled to continually repeat and expand upon their compulsions, no matter what the cost. it is certainly a dark perspective on the nature of mankind.

but that darkness, that oppressiveness, is really at the heart of this novel's appeal. the back cover quaintly describes this novel as "CyberGoth", which of course is a pretty stupid moniker... but it also makes some sense. imagine a gigantic spaceship crewed by five misanthropes, haunted by voices from outside of time, full of enslaved rats and unimaginably deadly weapons, captained by an unconscious individual whose plague symptoms include the transformation of all materials around him into a vaguely disgusting, tendril-y mess. imagine two planets: one whose decadent citizens while away the time playing assassination games and another whose berserk citizens seem to be engaging in relentlessly bloody revolution every couple years. imagine a culture where marriage includes a "wedding gun" that shoots dna of your spouse directly into your forehead. imagine a horrific version of the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, one where the unknowable enigma wants to kill you and all of your stupid little species. imagine Lovecraft in Space. there, now put that all together and you've imagined Revelation Space. ...more

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Oct 19, 2015 Apatt rated it really liked it

There is no getting away from Alastair Reynolds. In the sf book discussion forums I participate in (Reddit) his name is always cropping up. I keep putting him off as I have too many books on my list, but the relentless mentions he gets is like he is tapping on my shoulder saying "When are you gonna read my stuff?"

Like a lot of space opera this one is epic in scale, races and planets live and die at the drop of a hat. What makes Revelation Space special is the author's vast imagination, the scien There is no getting away from Alastair Reynolds. In the sf book discussion forums I participate in (Reddit) his name is always cropping up. I keep putting him off as I have too many books on my list, but the relentless mentions he gets is like he is tapping on my shoulder saying "When are you gonna read my stuff?"

Like a lot of space opera this one is epic in scale, races and planets live and die at the drop of a hat. What makes Revelation Space special is the author's vast imagination, the scientific details and story telling skills. What let him down a little bit is the somewhat flat characters. Initially, I felt like the characters are pancake shaped things pushing the story towards its conclusion. A few of them do develop into fairly interesting people later on, but the female protagonists tend to be of the tough as nails Ellen Riply type. Generally characters development is not a strong point of this book.

More successful is the depiction of AI and aliens. I love the fascinating speculation on the nature of consciousness, and what constitute sentience. The concept of Alpha, Beta, Gamma classes of AI is ingenious. In fact, the AI characters tend to be more interesting than the human ones for me. The aliens make more of a cameo appearance, but their strange history and mystery surrounding them (kind of Cthulhu-esque) is very interesting. The aliens are satisfyingly alien, so damn alien that people need to have their brains modified just to communicate meaningfully with them, and I also love it when zones of reality, space and time get all bendy and weird.

The prose style is functional and readable if a little prosaic, for a story of this scope there is surprisingly few characters points of view, which makes the complex story easier to follow. Initially I was concerned about the absence of humor, moments of levity is always good to balance the mood of the novel, fortunately, Mr. Reynolds sneaked some humorous moments in later, especially with some snarky AI comments.

This is a worthwhile read and I am interested to read more of Alastair Reynolds in the near future (within this epoch).
____________________________________

Update : In August 2013 I read Redemption Ark the direct sequel to Revelation Space. It is massively better than Revelation Space, and it makes trudging through the dull bits of Revelation Space entirely worthwhile. Also worth mentioning is Chasm City which is set in the Revelation Space universe but is a standalone novel. Again, it is a tremendous read and highly recommended.

Update: October 3, 2015
I finally read Absolution Gap, the last volume of the Revelation Space trilogy, it is also very good, but Redemption Ark is the best of the three books.

The best Alastair Reynolds novel is (IMO) the standalone House of Suns. ...more

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Oct 12, 2012 seak rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2012, top-10-scifi

My preferred genre is fantasy and the more epic the better for me. Shoot, the more volumes the better (okay, I draw the line at some point). But at the same time, I like variety. I'm the type of person who tries everything on the menu at a restaurant (not at the same time of course).

This doesn't change when it comes to my reading preferences. I don't stray too far from genre, but there's lots of variation from fantasy to science fiction, steampunk to urban fantasy, elfpunk, space opera, scifi-f ...more

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Mar 17, 2015 Andrew Obrigewitsch rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi

Three surefire steps to ruin a good story:

1. Insert cardboard cutout characters that have the same personality over analyzing everything they can.

2. Include massive 20 minute info dumps every 20 minutes.

3. Have your book narrated by Ben Stein the boring teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Wonder Years.

This is literally how this book went:

(very conservative mildly interested voice) "By George, Sam, I think someone just vaporized Joe, with a trans-numatic ray gun. Why isn't that strang ...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Princessjay rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

2.5 STARS that I cannot round up to 3.

I like long books. After a while, there's a sense of familiarity that comes from having been immersed in a world, a situation, a set of characters, that is very soothing. However, I do need decent characters to latch on-to for maximum enjoyment.

At 600-plus pages, Revelation Space is a comfortably long first novel in a trilogy. It is set in a dark, entropic universe, where the human race has populated or at least surveyed much of the galaxy, but seems to have 2.5 STARS that I cannot round up to 3.

I like long books. After a while, there's a sense of familiarity that comes from having been immersed in a world, a situation, a set of characters, that is very soothing. However, I do need decent characters to latch on-to for maximum enjoyment.

At 600-plus pages, Revelation Space is a comfortably long first novel in a trilogy. It is set in a dark, entropic universe, where the human race has populated or at least surveyed much of the galaxy, but seems to have past its prime, and everything is slowly falling apart -- political factions & civil unrest, a plague that infects technology itself, the trials of being stranded on a planet with no way out... A well-constructed, gloomy universe, with much room for exploration.

Unfortunately, the characters themselves leave much to be desired. I could not, for the life of me, get a grasp on their degree of humanity. The main problem is this: there is not a clear and consistent moral outlook in this universe. Characters are described schizophrenically as bad-ass future space-farers who, in their centuries of life, have seen and participated in much routine violence & destruction, yet in the next paragraph experience horror and remorse at comparatively minor atrocities they must do by logic or circumstances -- without any kind of justification for merging these two facets together to form cohesive human beings.

For example, one main character spends decades traveling through the cosmos seeking to cure her Captain from a disgusting plague, yet barely cares whether her fellow space-crew -- along whose side she had worked and lived for decades -- are alive or dead. A few words to explain why she can be so loyal to a Captain who has been cryogenically frozen for years yet sociopathic to her co-workers would do much to make her into a living, breathing, contradictory human being. As it were, she is a collection of traits & obsessions that does not come together to form a whole.

And this is the case for most of the characters. This, and the frantic, unnecessary shifts of perspective to create artificial cliff-hangers, killed much of my enjoyment.

Finally, I wouldn't really call this space opera -- it lacks the sweep of destiny, the giant emotionality, the sheer number of people and time that is implicit in the genre. This is a story about a couple of people, often trapped inside their own heads, over a couple decades & a few light years, converging into a single incident that may, theoretically, impact humanity...

A good first novel, but I am hoping the next books in the series will be much improved. ...more

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Jun 25, 2013 David Sven rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

This is a lot how I imagine Peter F Hamilton would read like if he never got sidetracked and had a manageable number of story arcs, with half the word count. Alistair Reynolds delivers a ripper that is part space opera part cyberpunk and a touch of horror. I’m guessing this is what you would call “hard scifi” – I’m not too sure because it lacks the poor and often cartoony characterization and bland prose style that has been my normal(though limited) experience with hard scifi – Yeah, I’m looking This is a lot how I imagine Peter F Hamilton would read like if he never got sidetracked and had a manageable number of story arcs, with half the word count. Alistair Reynolds delivers a ripper that is part space opera part cyberpunk and a touch of horror. I’m guessing this is what you would call “hard scifi” – I’m not too sure because it lacks the poor and often cartoony characterization and bland prose style that has been my normal(though limited) experience with hard scifi – Yeah, I’m looking at you Asimov... and Niven, don’t you be ducking and trying to hide your three legged, two headed sock muppet - I’ve already seen it.

The story throws us into a post human civilization in the 26th century where the development of near light speed travel has seen humanity spread out through the galaxy. Humans have further diverged as advances in nanotechnology and cybernetics sees some groups of humans swapping out body parts for integrated machinery and implants. Some, like the Conjoiners, have even changed out brain cells for nanotech cells to the extent where eventually the limitations of the brain’s processing power is transcended. And then there are those who have gone the whole hog and uploaded themselves into machinery, transitioning from thinking organisms to sentient software. The inner space battles in this book are just as intense as the physical fights.

The first half of the book was a little slow and it took me a bit to get oriented in the Universe Reynolds has created – but coming into the second half the plot was flying at light speed and it was hard to put down.

The star of the show for me, and arguably what kept me on the hook through the first half of the story was the Nostalgia for Infinity - a “lighthugger” ie a spaceship capable of travelling at near light speed. The Nostalgia for Infinity is a centuries old, four kilometer long generation ship. Once it held hundreds of thousands of travelers in cryosleep, but now it is crewed by a mere handful of militaristic types consisting of three Ultra’s,( ie part human part machine chimerics (cyborgs?) who have designed themselves for the rigours of living in deep space) as well as a couple of extras who the Ultra’s have usually kidnapped and subjugated with “loyalty implants.” And then there is the Captain - who is something else again, an extreme chimeric that could only be called human in the loosest sense of the word - One scary dude.

Apart from the crew, the spaceship itself is pretty cool. I liked the janitor-rats. Rodents genetically engineered with biochemical receptors attuned to receive instructions from the ship. Then there’s the gunnery with planet slagging weapons, controlled by neural interface with a gunnery officer. And then there are places that even the Ultra’s fear to tread - Places where the dead speak or where viruses have taken over the machinery. Fascinating and intriguing.

But, as scary as the Nostlgia for Infinity and it’s cyborg crew are, there things a lot worse out there. Alien things - Things that have been lying dormant for hundreds of millenia. Some secrets are best left buried. Some things just aren’t meant to be dug up.

Surprisingly enjoyable given the slow start.

4 stars
...more

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Mar 17, 2013 Dirk Grobbelaar rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, science-fiction, books-i-own

Delayed Review

OK. I read Revelation Space back when the Rust Belt was still the Glitter Band (ho ho) so, again, I have to reserve some judgement regarding the literary aspects of the novel. Although, if memory serves, I seem to recall that it was actually written quite well.

I’m sticking to the five star rating I gave it at the time. In fact, this book is also on my Favourites shelf, and there it shall remain.

I really enjoyed the dark and gothic vibe of Revelation Space, which, by the way, is ex ...more

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Aug 05, 2013 Cecily rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-future-speculative-fict

(Review from Mar 08, 2011, which had somehow ended up as a comment, rather than a review.)

An epic "hard" sci-fi space opera (so my son tells me), with links to some of Reynolds' other novels, but which works well as a standalone book too.

It opens with three separate storylines, which gradually come together: Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist, researching the extinct Amarantin of the planet Resurgam; a spaceship crewed by ultras, with a sick captain in reefersleep and the triumvirate jostling for po (Review from Mar 08, 2011, which had somehow ended up as a comment, rather than a review.)

An epic "hard" sci-fi space opera (so my son tells me), with links to some of Reynolds' other novels, but which works well as a standalone book too.

It opens with three separate storylines, which gradually come together: Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist, researching the extinct Amarantin of the planet Resurgam; a spaceship crewed by ultras, with a sick captain in reefersleep and the triumvirate jostling for power; an assassin recruited in Chasm City on Yellowstone. It does mean the early chapters jump around rather frequently, but generally it works.

Reynolds is a good story teller. The plots are engaging, and he has a good balance between enough exposition to avoid confusing the reader, but withholding some to tantalise the reader so they are compelled to read on.

However, there is one major prong of the plot (the ultra's mission) that involved a huge amount of effort for an apparently pointless reason. I found it increasingly frustrating, and when an explanation was eventually given, it wasn't very satisfying and felt more like a plot device (to bring the storylines together) than actual plot.

The story has elements of thriller (the assassin and the spaceship), mystery (how the Amarantin died out, the Sylveste Institute and what happened to Cal's alpha sim) and psychological drama (what the Shrouders are, and what revelation space is).

The weakness is in the characterisation, and I found it more noticeable in this than in Chasm City or The Prefect. There are plenty of strong female characters, but you wouldn't know they were female if he didn't tell you, and I was taken surprise by a relationship that developed and was never convinced by it, even when one partner mentioned their love for the other. I wouldn't want a slushy romance, but this lacked credibility.

There are also places where it seems a little too derivative, mainly of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, and like them, it would make a fantastic film: it is very cinematic.

Yet despite these weaknesses, it's still more than 3* because I enjoyed it so much and wanted to know what happened and why.

There were some wonderful ideas, e.g. "a fastidious neatness... like a poltergeist in reverse"; "always feel that Volyova had spent hours rehearsing, hoping she would sound off-the-cuff"; "most of woke up in the recovery suite"; "It looked like a biology lesson for the gods, or a snapshot of the kind of pornography which might be enjoyed by sentient planets", and "hanging sculptures which subscribed to no recognisable aesthetic tendency".

Best of all was something to make an iPad seem dull: a virtual reality biography, "accessed in may ways, from different viewpoints, and with varying degrees of interactivity", so the subject gets disoriented by his own life story, because it was "constructed with no regard for the niceties of linear time" and included a "shattered mosaic of interchangeable events". I want one. But till such a thing exists, I'll move on to another Reynolds. ...more

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May 07, 2012 Robert rated it really liked it

Shelves: sf

Does Reynolds get a lot of inspiration from films? Chasm City's Mulch is reminiscent of Blade Runner. John Brannigan's Nostalgia for Infinity ends up looking like the Alien queen did the decor. Eraserheads delete back-ups (of your mind). Reynolds openly admits that much of the inspiration for his finest work, Diamond Dogs, comes from gorno movies.

Some writers slowly develop into good novelists over a span of several, even a dozen, books. Others burst into print with a debut novel that shows a fu ...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Ian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fits-like-a-glove, love-strong-women, must-read-again, didn-t-expect-to-love-it, audiobook, all-time-favorites, space-opera, unique-theories, revelation-space

I debated whether to write a review of Revelation Space on its own or wait until I finished the Revelation Space trilogy and write a single review of the whole story. This is a debate that goes on in my head any time I read a multi-book series and I haven't established a blanket policy one way or the other. For me, it depends.

Take, for example, Dan Simmons' Ilium and Olympos . They are really one book that was split arbitrarily because it was too long to publish in a single volume. Think LotR ...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Warwick rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, sci-fi

One day the world will be full of science fiction authors whose prose styles are as good as their imaginations. Yeah, there are a few. But on the evidence of this book, Alastair Reynolds isn't one of them.

What this novel does have going for it is a great theory of how the galaxy might look in 500 years' time. The picture painted here – of a lonely universe, full of space and mysteries and still limited by barriers like the speed of light – feels distinctly plausible and, presumably, owes a lot t One day the world will be full of science fiction authors whose prose styles are as good as their imaginations. Yeah, there are a few. But on the evidence of this book, Alastair Reynolds isn't one of them.

What this novel does have going for it is a great theory of how the galaxy might look in 500 years' time. The picture painted here – of a lonely universe, full of space and mysteries and still limited by barriers like the speed of light – feels distinctly plausible and, presumably, owes a lot to Reynolds's day-job as a working astrophysicist.

There are other good points. Thanks Christ, here is a sci-fi author who writes good, strong women characters who are not just there to have a variety of unlikely futuristic sexual encounters. (...Although actually, thinking about it, one or two of those might not have gone amiss.)

The problem is that it's just not written all that well. The dialogue never strikes you as very realistic, and often consists of characters sitting around explaining chunks of the plot to each other. The narrative is pushed along in brief third-person sections, which stop and start apparently for no other reason than to engineer some dramatic tension, and which tend to finish on portentous one-line paragraphs like "But she was not quite fast enough."

Some sentences barely hold together. We are told strange things, such as when "Volyova dredged a clucking laugh from somewhere deep inside herself". Try visualising that if you can. And when Reynolds reaches for a suitably scientific metaphor, he has a way of bludgeoning the life out of it, with unintentionally comic effect.

Sylveste examined his own state of mind and found – it was the last thing he had expected – total calm. But it was like the calm that existed on the metallic hydrogen oceans of the gas giant planets further out from Pavonis – only maintained by crushing pressures from above and below.

I think that might be the worst paragraph I've read all year. It should be entered into some kind of competition.

Anyway, I don't want to put you off too much. It's fun, it's interesting, it's just not doing much to fight for sci-fi's place in literature. Revelation Space: it's funky, but it's clunky. ...more

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Aug 04, 2013 Paul rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

I used to read a lot more science fiction 20 years ago than I do now, but I've had this on my shelves for a while and the other Reynolds I read was ok. Reynolds is an Astrophysicist and clealry knows his stuff. This is the first of a trilogy and is on a grand scale, what is termed space opera, I suppose. The plot is complex with a number of narrative strands and focuses on why there appear to be few extant spacefaring civilisations and many more civilisations that appear to have ended/been destr ...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Szplug rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Three and a half stars, rounded up for the excellent final stretch and the fertile imagination exhibited throughout. Reynolds also proves himself a quality penman. However, the characterization—as so often seems to be the case in this genre—has room for improvement, to say the least, while the selectiveness and inconsistency of those character's morality and actions, untethered as they may become within a subluminal civilizational archipelago amidst an unbounded cosmic ocean, nagged and nibbled Three and a half stars, rounded up for the excellent final stretch and the fertile imagination exhibited throughout. Reynolds also proves himself a quality penman. However, the characterization—as so often seems to be the case in this genre—has room for improvement, to say the least, while the selectiveness and inconsistency of those character's morality and actions, untethered as they may become within a subluminal civilizational archipelago amidst an unbounded cosmic ocean, nagged and nibbled away at my enjoyment; and a more diligent editor trimming away at the fat would have been appreciated. Still, as far as space opera goes, this is about as good as it gets: Reynolds delivers entertainment, speculation, dark mystery, high tech savvy, and downright satisfaction in ingenious fashion.

As an addendum—and one which contains spoilage—the more I think about this novel, the more I am simultaneously impressed by Reynolds' cosmic creativity and writing skill and irritated by the character and story inconsistencies, particularly those annoying plot bubbles that were inflated for dramatic effect and then left pinned to the textual corkboard, receding to invisibility as events propelled the reader forward; plus, the Amarantin bifurcation doesn't make any sense. As for the ending, in the rapid crush of trying to wind it all down I neither sufficiently appreciated how cleverly Reynolds brought things to a head, nor how silly that whole Walkin' on the Moon...Da do do coda was. If only Reynolds had cut that final cropping of picnic basket dunciad, Revelation Space would have ended on a high note—well, after I learned what happened to Khouri and Ilia. Notwithstanding that Reynolds failed to establish any coherence to their actions, outlook, or purposes, I have to admit that I was pretty fond of those two ladies by the time Sylveste makes his big play for stardom—indeed, Ilia Volyova continuously reminded me, for reasons I cannot readily concretize, of GRer-on-sabbatical Knig-o-lass. It turns out that I guess I am fine with the fate Reynolds determined for that saucy, plucky, and resourceful pair; it's the remainder that just slightly curdled. ...more

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Aug 27, 2007 Adam rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: fans of intelligent horror and scifi

If your fan of the wing of scifi represented in the mainstream by movies like Ridley Scott's Alien and John Carpenter's The Thing(or more recently Danny Boyles'Sunshine)than this book will be endless entertainment for for you. Barely human nightmare show characters you wouldn't want to be in a dark alley with, discovering a universe filled with lovecraftian horror. Similiar to Delany's Nova and Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers with identity confusion straight out of Gene Wolfe land plus aliens as weird ...more

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Jun 26, 2010 Stephen rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, award-nominee-locus, award-nominee-arthur-c-clarke, multiple-award-nominee, audiobook, 2000-2005

4.5 stars. I really struggled with whether to give this a 4 or 5 star rating. On the 5 star side (or even the 6 star side as I give those books I think are truly special) the ideas, concepts, technology, world-building (or better stated, galactic civilization building) and descriptions of the various factions of humanity are amazingly original and incredibly entertaining. Put simply, there are a lot of "WOW" moments where I said "this guy is brilliant."

Also on the level of a 5 star novel is the ...more

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Dec 28, 2008 Lightreads rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction

Humans of the twenty-sixth century live in a galaxy more empty than it really should be, haunted by the ghosts of species long extinct. There's 550 pages of intricate plotting here, so I'll just say it's a hard SF novel that jumps from an archaeological expedition to an alien plague to quantum mechanics to neuroprogramming.

The good: Women! who are cool! and who do very cool things! Shiny hard SF ideas. A scattering of really disturbing and effective images that will stick with me. Excellent and ...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Scott rated it liked it

Shelves:

Sprawling, energetic, idea-packed, and ambitious as hell. I really did enjoy this one, despite some fairly strong qualms, and I plan to keep reading in the sequence.

Reynolds has an attractive habit of trying to end each major scene in the novel with some sort of cliffhanger or interesting hint, and an equally unattractive habit of then giving us the conclusion or the revelation as a flashback within a future scene. For a hypothetical example, imagine a scene ending with a character staring at a Sprawling, energetic, idea-packed, and ambitious as hell. I really did enjoy this one, despite some fairly strong qualms, and I plan to keep reading in the sequence.

Reynolds has an attractive habit of trying to end each major scene in the novel with some sort of cliffhanger or interesting hint, and an equally unattractive habit of then giving us the conclusion or the revelation as a flashback within a future scene. For a hypothetical example, imagine a scene ending with a character staring at a bomb that is about to explode. The next scene will feature that same character calmly eating breakfast, and after four or five pages of breakfast, we'll get an omniscient digression back to how they handled the bomb. This disjointing of the narrative flow is repeated, over and over again, and at times it pounds the novel's sense of story progression into fragments. As a narrative device, it tosses aside the advantage of straightforward chronology but doesn't add any particular artistic or thematic character in return... it's merely annoying, the authorial equivalent of a nervous tic.

The final portion of the book suffers, as an awful lot of contemporary big-concept hard SF novels do, from an unnatural acceleration in its last few dozen pages as action upon action and revelation upon revelation are crammed into an exceedingly tiny space. It's a classic, cautionary example of the dictum that just because a novel has stopped does not mean an ending has been written.

Still, it's got an awful lot to recommend it, including a colorful refusal to allow FTL travel or communication and a lot of fascinating speculation relevant to the Fermi Paradox. One thing I will grant Revelation Space is that it, moreso than any other science fiction novel I've ever read, does a bang-up job of simultaneously expressing how imponderably huge our galaxy is, and yet how very, very small it is on a universal scale. Reynolds' astronomical background is richly expressed in his work, and a thoughtful reader's mind will be bent in many directions. ...more

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Dec 14, 2011 Ben Babcock rated it liked it

Shelves: own, science-fiction, posthuman, space-opera, artificial-intelligence, 2011-read

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In case you haven’t heard yet, I love hard science fiction, particularly in space opera form. I could digress into some hefty analysis of how designations like hard are loaded terms that only exacerbate science fiction’s precarious position in the genre ghetto—but I won’t. Suffice it to say, I’m referring to stories that use advanced but plausible technology for technology’s sake, stories whose events span millions, if not billions, of years and can affect the lives of countless planets througho ...more

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May 14, 2013 Lee rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, epic-science-fiction

This was my second attempt at reading this book. My first ended about 150 pages in with complete confusion. My second attempt obviously saw me in a much better place to read it as I managed to get through the whole story.

I increase my rating from two to three stars. But really, it is a three and a half star book. I also had to create a new tag; epic science fiction, because I was originally going to use the Space Opera tag, but this is not opera, by any stretch of the imagination. I often though This was my second attempt at reading this book. My first ended about 150 pages in with complete confusion. My second attempt obviously saw me in a much better place to read it as I managed to get through the whole story.

I increase my rating from two to three stars. But really, it is a three and a half star book. I also had to create a new tag; epic science fiction, because I was originally going to use the Space Opera tag, but this is not opera, by any stretch of the imagination. I often thought that Hamilton could tell a massive sci fi story and have plenty of technology wrapping. Well Reynolds takes that sci fi and takes it way way up, often to heights that confuses you silly.

This book is 60% plot/story and 40% hard sci fi. I now know what 'hard sci fi' means. To me, it means moments of incomprehension and mind wandering. This hardness is what stops this from being a four star for me. There is, within the book, a fascinating story of epic proportion, that is fed to you slowly over time, interestingly the characters in the book begun to learn what the story is a long time before you do, so you feel blind at times as they go about trying to do what they need to do. I didn't mind that, it was different, a little frustrating, but had me wanting to know what was going on and I couldn't wait to find out. The problem is the incredibly detailed spacey stuff. Yes, yes, how untechnical of me. But I didn't want to read a book on astro physics. I love sci fi and warp speed if you can Scotty, but Reynolds really likes to explain not only the concept of new 'stuff', but the technology designed to make it happen, the theory behind the idea (so the hard sci fi fans can't claim it is ridiculous) and then how this 'stuff' warps time space skinny latte continuum. See, it was so technical I cannot even explain how technical it was.

So is that enough to put me off? The answer is no! Overall I was gripped enough by the story to want more. It was unusual to read a story with the potential to be so freakin huge and only have half a dozen characters. Being a Hamilton and Erikson fan, I am used to many many story arcs and hundreds of characters. In this, six will cover the characters and a couple of arcs all coming together, very cleverly.

There is massive potential in this epic and I do look forward to reading book two and understanding at least 60% of it. ...more

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Nov 18, 2009 Lisa Eskra rated it it was ok

Hmm, where to start with this tome...it was immediately obvious why most people steer clear of sci-fi. The level of scientific realism felt forced at the expense of plot and character. Guess that's "hard" sci-fi for you.

All three POV characters had the same voice, and it was too similar to the how the author wrote: ie, dropping in words people would NEVER say because people don't speak that. I could buy the protagonist dropping ten dolla words all the time, but everyone? Strong female leads -- a ...more

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Oct 02, 2014 Chris rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, fof-reads

Well. That was different.

How do I review a book I didn't understand? For that matter, how do I rate a book I didn't understand?

Or better yet, how do I like a book I didn't understand? Well, it happened. What happened, I don't know so much. But I enjoyed the ride.

So yeah. The writing is beautiful in this book. It will take you places...err places you won't recognize, but places where you will go "whoah..dude".

Seriously, I don't know what it is, but Reynolds does have a great narrative voice, even ...more

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Nov 05, 2014 Óscar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook

4.5/5 Primer libro que leo de Reynolds y me ha parecido excelente en el desarrollo de la trama y los personajes. Su prosa me ha gustado notablemente, siendo capaz de posicionarme en ciertos escenarios con increíble realismo como sintiendo la escala "real" del Universo. Multitud de ideas novedosas en cuanto a especulación o proyección de ideas futuras.

El único pero que le pongo es la relativa facilidad de algunas tramas menores para confluir y resolverse mutuamente.

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Oct 07, 2015 Claudia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Marvelous hard space opera.

Slowly built, with three story lines which at some point merge together, it depicts a very dark universe, full of technological wonders, both human and alien, but not all in the best interest of life.

Very well developed characters, plenty of descriptions of the surrounding worlds and technologies. I don't know if it will be on everyone's taste, for it is not quite full of action. The focus is mainly on the choices which have to be made, the struggle behind those choice ...more

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Feb 03, 2015 Rob rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, science-fiction, read-2014, own

Executive Summary: An interesting story that I found too confusing and full of unlikable characters leaving me a bit disappointed.

Audio book: I like John Lee as a reader for space opera. He has a good voice for it in my opinion. I've listened to some Peter F. Hamilton he narrated as well. He does a few accents and voices, but nothing really special to add to the story and make it a must listen.

That said, this isn't a book I think that works very well in Audio. There is a lot going on and I found ...more

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May 16, 2014 Steve rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, horror, sci-fi-and-fantasy, space-opera

Whew! The last 50 pages felt like a hundred. I originally turned to RS in an attempt to cure my BSG withdrawals. Be careful about what you ask for! Initially I was unprepared for the density of Reynolds' creation. As a result, I set the book aside a few times. But about a third of the way through, dots started connecting, and I was hooked. As a first novel, this is wildly ambitious. So much so that it might be too much. The influences are multiple: The Shining (a haunted ship), Lovecraft, Dante' ...more

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Dec 26, 2014 Mark Hebwood rated it it was ok

Although my rating says that I did not like this book, I sort of did, really. But I did not like it enough, and Alastair's prose started to tire me out after about 200 pages, and got the better of me on page 258, when I stopped reading.

The reason I found this increasingly hard-going is that the novel is heavy on narrative. There are few dialogues, and when the characters do talk to each other, they somehow do so without displaying any defining traits, idiosyncracies, or emotions. I am sure I am Although my rating says that I did not like this book, I sort of did, really. But I did not like it enough, and Alastair's prose started to tire me out after about 200 pages, and got the better of me on page 258, when I stopped reading.

The reason I found this increasingly hard-going is that the novel is heavy on narrative. There are few dialogues, and when the characters do talk to each other, they somehow do so without displaying any defining traits, idiosyncracies, or emotions. I am sure I am too harsh here, but they all sound the same.

And because they do, the novel somehow lacks a "soul". The narrative is complex, and the plot intelligent - that is the reason why I was able to stay with it for as long as I did. But after a while, I understood what was going on, and predictions I made about how the plot would unfold became true after another 50 pages or so. That is when I would have needed the characters to develop a soul - but they didn't.

To give you an idea of how complex this plot is: Alastair tells his story through the eyes of three central characters, Sylveste, an ambitious archaeologist, Volyova, an officer on a space-ship (this may be a slaver, but I stopped reading before this was revealed), and Khouri, a professional assassin. Each character is central to his own plot, location, and timeline. Sylveste is located on the backwater planet of Resurgam, with his timeline starting in 2551. Volyova is in mid-transit on a spacecraft in 2543, and we meet Khouri for the first time in Chasm City on the planet Yellowstone in 2524. The strands continue at first in isolation, but later blend into one.

If the reader cares enough, it is actually possible from random information given here and there (on travel speeds, distances, length of cyronic sleep-phases) to predict the time when the three characters should meet, and be right! I predicted on page 91 that the narrative strands would eventually blend in the narrative year 2570. On page 258 the spacecraft, now with Volyova and Khouri on board, arrived in Resurgam orbit - the year given was 2566! That I can make this prediction at all from facts scattered around in the plot is remarkable, and speaks to the excellent internal consistency of Alastair's story.

But, as I said, this can only keep my attention for so long. I would have enjoyed this more if Alastair had brought his characters more to life. That he is able to do that he shows impressively in some of his other novels that I am reading at the moment and widely prefer (Chasm City and Terminal World)

P.S. - Alastair committed an error on page 91, when he said that Sylveste was 12 years old in 2373. From information given on page 167, and independently on page 9, it follows that he was born in 2343, and hence will have been 12 years old in 2355, not 2373. Nerd? I am a nerd? Of course I am. But my point is the same - it is remarkable that I can find such a mistake in the first place. Alastair's time sequencing is remarkably consistent, down to time dilation from relativistic effects. Very impressive! ...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Scott Rhee rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction

British sci-fi author Alastair Reynold's first novel "Revelation Space" is a terrific read; an amazing blend of space opera, hard SF, and gothic horror that reads like a cross between Frank Herbert's "Dune" and Ridley Scott's film "Alien". The story is set in a rather dreary far future in which mankind is split into so many warring factions that no one knows who or they are fighting. On planet Resurgam, architect Dan Sylveste has discovered the artifacts of an ancient alien civilization which se ...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Kevin rated it it was ok

First things first: I usually don't read a ton of sci-fi and so to have read five (or six?) sci-fi books in the past month puts me a little overboard, and perhaps makes me more judgmental than I should be.

Okay, let's see. At least it's not old-school sci-fi like 1950s stuff with ray guns and moon rockets and all that. It's modern SF, and loaded with science. However, I am spoiled, having just finished reading a bunch of Peter Watts stuff, and I liked Watts for the most part, so I was continually ...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Optimism rated it it was amazing

Here's a likely timeline of your reactions to reading this book.

First half: ...Okay? Where is this going? Interesting, but...
Halfway point: Ah, okay. Now I see.
Hundred pages from the end: Oh. Wow. That was unexpected. NOW I get it.
Fifteen pages from the end: OH HOLY ****, THAT EXPLAINS *EVERYTHING.*

Okay, a disclaimer. You should only read this book if you're in the mood for some serious, hard, sci-fi. The author has a Ph.D in astronomy, and isn't afraid to show it. This means two things, often s ...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Zach rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, horror

A very dark space opera featuring some very cool scenes, ideas, and set pieces, mostly revolving around the Nostalgia for Infinity: an ancient and decrepit space ship the size of a small city, decaying, infected with a plague that messily blends the organic and the mechanic, and generally just a gothic haunted house transposed hundreds of years into the future. The ship’s captain has fallen prey to said disease and is frozen at the bottom of the ship in order to slow the amalgamation, while what A very dark space opera featuring some very cool scenes, ideas, and set pieces, mostly revolving around the Nostalgia for Infinity: an ancient and decrepit space ship the size of a small city, decaying, infected with a plague that messily blends the organic and the mechanic, and generally just a gothic haunted house transposed hundreds of years into the future. The ship’s captain has fallen prey to said disease and is frozen at the bottom of the ship in order to slow the amalgamation, while what’s left of his crew try to track down an archaeologist who for no good reason is the only one who can save the captain. Then there’s a mystery about some extinct aliens. It doesn’t matter because none of the plot makes any damn sense, especially if you expend any effort trying to poke holes in it at all.

A lot of this book is kind of charmingly messy and amateurish. The prose, while not exactly good, is not exactly bad either, although the dialogue is... painful. Either expository or action-hero-sarcastic - whereas some of us might answer the question “Do you ___?” with “no,” Reynolds’ characters are more likely to say something like “Do I exactly seem like I ___ at the moment right now?” Can’t you just feel the bad-ass sarcasm? Speaking of which, there is one character that all the other characters always refer to as a scary badass kind of guy, but he never does anything and is kind of a chump, actually. Reynolds is not good at showing instead of telling. It is also worth mentioning, though, that two of the three main characters are women, who are just as strong/resourceful/intelligent (uh... bad-ass) as the men, and who never suffer any sort of humiliation or indignity predicated on the fact that they are women.

I’m running out of things to say despite the fact that this book was like 600 pages long and seemed to move along a mile a minute, but not all that much really happened. This review is coming across more negatively than I intended, but it’s really the haunted-house-spaceship that saved it. Hopefully Reynolds gets better in later books. ...more

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About Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds, former scientist and now full-time writer. Most of what he writes is science fiction, with a strong concern for scientific verisimilitude (although he is prepared to break the rules for the sake of a good story). He has lived in England, Scotland and the Netherlands where he worked as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency until 2004, but now makes his home back in his ...more

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“It looked like a biology lesson for gods, or a snapshot of the kind of pornography which might be enjoyed by sentient planets.” — 12 likes

“It's an ancient technique known as lying, Khouri.” — 6 likes

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