Book 14: "Revelation Space" by Alastair Reynolds
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 19:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeVolyova had now less than five hundred metres to go before she dragged the cache-weapon into the flames. It was putting up a fight, thrusters going haywire, but its overall thrust capacity was less than that of the spider-room. Understandable, Khouri thought. When its designers had conceived the ancillary systems which would be required to move and position the device, the idea that it would also have to fend for itself in a wrestling match had probably not been uppermost in their minds.
Well I finally finished after a couple of weeks reading on the train during my commute.
The story takes place in the mid-25th century, and starts with three separate strands which gradually come together: Dan Sylveste, is the arrogant and single-minded former ruler of the human colony on Resurgam, which began as a scientific expedition from Yellowstone. He has been in prison since a coup eight years ago, fuming about being prevented from continuing his studies of the Amarantin, the dead race who inhabited the plant 900,000 years ago. Khouri is an ex-soldier now working as an assassin on Yellowstone, where she is hired to hunt the bored and rich, whose lives are given spice by their (usually successful) attempts to survive until the end of the contract. After a successful but unusual assassination a mysterious woman blackmails her into taking on a contract off-world. And then there is Volyova, one of the triumvirate running an Ultra trading ship whose captain is dying of the melding plague. the ship is heading for Yellowstone searching for the one surgeon who helped the captain in the past and may now be able to cure him with the help of a retrovirus engineered by Volyova.
Although I prefer shorter books than this and the story didn't really get going until the protagonists got together, the plot was anything but predictable, the gradually unfolding of the central mystery kept my interest, and what the characters discovered near the end of the book was truly fascinating.
Well I finally finished after a couple of weeks reading on the train during my commute.
The story takes place in the mid-25th century, and starts with three separate strands which gradually come together: Dan Sylveste, is the arrogant and single-minded former ruler of the human colony on Resurgam, which began as a scientific expedition from Yellowstone. He has been in prison since a coup eight years ago, fuming about being prevented from continuing his studies of the Amarantin, the dead race who inhabited the plant 900,000 years ago. Khouri is an ex-soldier now working as an assassin on Yellowstone, where she is hired to hunt the bored and rich, whose lives are given spice by their (usually successful) attempts to survive until the end of the contract. After a successful but unusual assassination a mysterious woman blackmails her into taking on a contract off-world. And then there is Volyova, one of the triumvirate running an Ultra trading ship whose captain is dying of the melding plague. the ship is heading for Yellowstone searching for the one surgeon who helped the captain in the past and may now be able to cure him with the help of a retrovirus engineered by Volyova.
Although I prefer shorter books than this and the story didn't really get going until the protagonists got together, the plot was anything but predictable, the gradually unfolding of the central mystery kept my interest, and what the characters discovered near the end of the book was truly fascinating.
