Alastair Reynolds

[Rob B]

At least I'll only have to wait three months as opposed the the usual 1-year delay between UK and US releases.

Good review Adam and it really has me excited for the book. I hope to all the gods that Ace keeps that gorgeous cover when they publish the book.

 

[chitman13]

Thanks Wert, really looking forward to reading this one now!

 

[nquixote]

And he does the worst job of anyone I have ever read at character development. I had no empathy for any of the characters.

This is the biggest reason I disliked Revelation Space.

I also thought the concepts were stuff I had seen before...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's a little annoying to have a whole book revolve around the Big Mystery, and then to have the Big Mystery turn out to be the same old Fred Saberhagen Berserkers.

Combine that with the poor writing, and I would have given up on the book after 100 pages if Reynolds hadn't been hyped as the Next Big Space Opera Writer. And of course I'm always harsher on heavily hyped authors and books...

 

[WhiteWolf]

I think a lot of people out there are more harsh with heavily hyped authors; that's just the way it is. I would even venture so far to say that there is a whole unidentified group of readers out there who will have a negative reaction to any author who is immediately successful, without at first playing the part of the starving artist. It's part of the whole "sell out" argument--music being more prevalent--that assumes big money, success and fame means lower quality and less creativity. This applies heavily to Alastair Reynolds, as I have often seen negative posts about him from people who often hype the lesser-known "indie" writers.

Everyone has a recommendation for this one restaurant or pizza place that "no one else knows about" because it's just to easy to go to Olive Garden for a good meal. And it's more high-brow to avoid bestselling writers.

Alastair Reynolds is popular because he is a good writer and his novels are very good, not just because of good packaging.

Although the good packaging certainly helps.

 

[nquixote]

It's part of the whole "sell out" argument--music being more prevalent--that assumes big money, success and fame means lower quality and less creativity.

For me, it's more about suspicion of crowd opinion, I suppose.

 

[WhiteWolf]

"Crowd opinion," or "Group Think" is something people should always be suspicious of, so I can't really blame you on that point.

I suppose I had the advantage of reading REVELATION SPACE when it was still new and before Reynolds had received the bulk of the hype he is enjoying now. So it was actually gratifying for me to see a guy who wrote a book I enjoyed find a large measure of success and acclaim because it ensured for me that there would be that many more of his books to read in the near future.

 

[FuzzBunneh]

Is it just me or does Reynolds really suck at ending his books? Just finished ABSOLUTION GAP and it has to be the worst conclusion to a trilogy ever. You don't write three books about humanity being wiped out and then unwind the story in five pages

Spoiler

with the bad guy moronically falling off a spaceship and the good guys being saved because one of them has a random hunch that no one goes against because hey, realistic decision making processes are complicated right? and it isn't like the issue under discussion is, you know, anything important

Oh well. It's a shame because he obviously has some great ideas, but I think he might be more comfortable with self-contained novels and more trivial issues.

 

[Werthead]

Is it just me or does Reynolds really suck at ending his books? Just finished ABSOLUTION GAP and it has to be the worst conclusion to a trilogy ever. You don't write three books about humanity being wiped out and then unwind the story in five pages

Spoiler

with the bad guy moronically falling off a spaceship and the good guys being saved because one of them has a random hunch that no one goes against because hey, realistic decision making processes are complicated right? and it isn't like the issue under discussion is, you know, anything important

Oh well. It's a shame because he obviously has some great ideas, but I think he might be more comfortable with self-contained novels and more trivial issues.

The story doesn't end in Absolution Gap but in the short story 'Galactic North' in the collection of the same name (which wasn't published until several years later).

It would have been handy if he'd told people about this beforehand though because, as you say, AG's ending is pretty much unfathomable by itself.

 

[kosmoface]

Is it just me or does Reynolds really suck at ending his books?

Indeed.

At first I was really enamoured with Revelation Space, but after the 70% mark I got doubts and when I finished I was angry.

Not one character that I really liked (okay, I can forgive that maybe), but the ending was just.... cheap. It was like: "Hey you DID see 2001, yes? Here I've got somehing with the same flavor. It comes...just out of my hat. Bingo. Isn't that a great ending?"

Uhm, no.

I couldn't believe it. Never bought another book from him. I didn't know he was a hyped author, when I read it last year.

 

[Rulkez]

Just finished House of Suns. I know many consider it to be one of his weaker works , but again , I LOVED it.

Reynolds is easily my number 1 must buy day 1 author now.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

The story doesn't end in Absolution Gap but in the short story 'Galactic North' in the collection of the same name (which wasn't published until several years later).

It would have been handy if he'd told people about this beforehand though because, as you say, AG's ending is pretty much unfathomable by itself.

So true, and baffling. Still, sensawunda...

 

[bobbb]

I read Chasm City last month and loved it until the end, where i started hating it. There is one part that completely destroyed it for me:

Spoiler

Tanner Mirabel had a full body scan to check if anything had changed or is changing and apparently the scan showed absolutely no signs of any snake fangs. Yet during the final fight what does he use to kill? Snake fangs, which apparently came out of nowhere.

To me that's like introducing a new character in the last chapter who turns out to be the killer.

 

[Ash]

Galactic North, however, is a good ending to the series

 

[s271]

Finished "Terminal World".
Very promising beginning - Vinge-like technological zones, posthuman infiltrators in steampunk world, airship pirates, technomages - and all come to nothing. Primitive, bland and predictable plot, characters are flat and underdeveloped, worldbuilding started and dropped in the middle to be replaced with some halfhearted indoor intrigue. As result the world is barely outlined. There are some attempts on horrors, but not quite successful. As Leo Tolstoy told about prominent author Leonid Andreyev -"He is trying to scare but I'm not afraid".
I was not especially impressed with "House of Suns" either, but I like "Terminal World" even less.

 

[suciul]

Finished "Terminal World".
Very promising beginning - Vinge-like technological zones, posthuman infiltrators in steampunk world, airship pirates, technomages - and all come to nothing. Primitive, bland and predictable plot, characters are flat and underdeveloped, worldbuilding started and dropped in the middle to be replaced with some halfhearted indoor intrigue. As result the world is barely outlined. There are some attempts on horrors, but not quite successful. As Leo Tolstoy told about prominent author Leonid Andreyev -"He is trying to scare but I'm not afraid".
I was not especially impressed with "House of Suns" either, but I like "Terminal World" even less.

I kind of agree about Terminal World; it had enough goodies for me to recommend it, but it leads my list of 2010 disappointments so far since it could have been so much more; for me its main fault was that Mr. Reynolds tried to write two kind of books - a steampunk adventure and a sense of wonder sf with lots of cool concepts and the balance is not there; for the first type the book lacks credible heroes/heroines and it starts delving too much into the underlying mind-blowing concepts, for the second type, the book delves too little into the underlying concepts, introduces and then drops them, while focusing mostly on adventure...

 

[Ash]

Yeah I agree on Terminal World. Had some great things going for it, but just never really took off for me.

I think if there was a followup I would get it. There is a lot of potential here I think.

 

[pox]

I'm somewhat interested in Terminal world because he CAN write, but in Absolution Gap ALL of the characters spoke with the same voice in the same way. The rough diamond hyperpig was indistinguishable from the hundreds year old conjoiner hard-time-hero. I had to restart paragraphs as they all agreed with one another in Star-Trek boardroom backslaps.

I was gutted. It just fizzles out. The closed loop universe thing he rushed through at the end should have been the culmination to the series, but could I remember which characters (or even book) the green replicators came from?

no. Silly boy.

 

[Woofdog2]

Is it just me or does Reynolds really suck at ending his books? Just finished ABSOLUTION GAP and it has to be the worst conclusion to a trilogy ever. You don't write three books about humanity being wiped out and then unwind the story in five pages

Spoiler

with the bad guy moronically falling off a spaceship and the good guys being saved because one of them has a random hunch that no one goes against because hey, realistic decision making processes are complicated right? and it isn't like the issue under discussion is, you know, anything important

Oh well. It's a shame because he obviously has some great ideas, but I think he might be more comfortable with self-contained novels and more trivial issues.

absolution gap's ending is an atrocity. What I have read about this is that this was the first book reynolds wrote after quitting his day job, he ended up with a deadline and no ending, and thus there is that 8 page epilogue, greenfly thrown in, and a very very neat series ended with massive holes, unresolved plot lines, etc.

I have no idea what reynold's feelings on this topic are, if anyone has direct input from him, I would be curious. I cannot imagine he is happy with how it ended either.

 

[nquixote]

Is it just me, or has Reynolds' popularity taken a dip lately? I haven't seen anything about Terminal World on the websites I read (io9, etc.) except the release announcement, and very little about House of Suns, and no one is recommending these books to me the way everyone said to read the Revelation Space trilogy, even though people on this forum say his writing has improved a lot. Nor have the recent books crammed the bookshelves at the local Borders and Barnes & Noble the way the Revelation Space trilogy did.

Am I wrong about this? How have the sales figures been for Reynolds' recent stuff?

 

[pox]

it's a good question that. It's reflected in my own attitude changing over time too. I can see there's loads of people still into him on this forum and I've been recalcitrant about slating the bits I don't like.
I used to recommend him a fair bit, but lately I've been telling people to stop at Revelation Space...