Book 32: “Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days” by Alastair Reynolds
Thursday, July 29th, 2010 19:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeAnother room, another wrong answer, another punishment.
It made the last look like a minor reprimand.
This book contained two novellas set in the Revelation Space universe.
Roland Childe to the Blood Spire came, leading a small expedition to a mysterious artefact that has been discovered on an otherwise barren planet. The Blood Spire is a lethally dangerous place, a tower that can only be climbed by solving puzzles to advance from one room to the next, the basic premise is quite similar to the film ‘Cube’, but the story does acknowledge its debt to the film. I would never have made it past room two, since my mathematical talents only extend as far as solving the easy prime numbers puzzle in the first room. Childe has put together a small group to explore the tower, although why he bothered bringing anyone apart from Celestine and Doctor Trintignant, I have no idea, as they are the only two people whose talents (for advanced mathematics and cybernetic surgery) were used, and it would have made more sense to leave the doctor on the ship, rather than risking losing him in the tower. Good story though, and a bit of a shock when you find out about the Diamond Dogs!
Turquoise Days is the story of a scientist, studying Pattern Jugglers on a small out of the way world called Turquoise, and the events brought on by the arrival of the first spaceship to have called there in a hundred years. Apart from the first scenes on the dirigible, I didn’t like this story very much, I assume that what happened at the Moat was meant to be exciting, but it just fell flat. And I was left wondering about the ‘snowflake cities’. What is snowflakey about them? Their shape? Their structure? Their colour? Do they float in the sky?
It made the last look like a minor reprimand.
This book contained two novellas set in the Revelation Space universe.
Roland Childe to the Blood Spire came, leading a small expedition to a mysterious artefact that has been discovered on an otherwise barren planet. The Blood Spire is a lethally dangerous place, a tower that can only be climbed by solving puzzles to advance from one room to the next, the basic premise is quite similar to the film ‘Cube’, but the story does acknowledge its debt to the film. I would never have made it past room two, since my mathematical talents only extend as far as solving the easy prime numbers puzzle in the first room. Childe has put together a small group to explore the tower, although why he bothered bringing anyone apart from Celestine and Doctor Trintignant, I have no idea, as they are the only two people whose talents (for advanced mathematics and cybernetic surgery) were used, and it would have made more sense to leave the doctor on the ship, rather than risking losing him in the tower. Good story though, and a bit of a shock when you find out about the Diamond Dogs!
Turquoise Days is the story of a scientist, studying Pattern Jugglers on a small out of the way world called Turquoise, and the events brought on by the arrival of the first spaceship to have called there in a hundred years. Apart from the first scenes on the dirigible, I didn’t like this story very much, I assume that what happened at the Moat was meant to be exciting, but it just fell flat. And I was left wondering about the ‘snowflake cities’. What is snowflakey about them? Their shape? Their structure? Their colour? Do they float in the sky?
