Alastair Reynolds: Bone Silence (2020, Orbit)
640 pages
English language
Published Sept. 7, 2020 by Orbit.
Alistair Reynolds delivers a sweeping continuation of the Ness sisters' story in Bone Silence. Old foes reappear, new allies are made and lots of stunning revelations.
In the acknowledgements Alistair writes that he is setting the Ness sisters aside "for a while". I look forward to reading more about them and/or the Congregation. #Bookstodon
Reynolds fans will be sputtering at the title, since of course the Glitter Band of his own Revelation Space universe is also a good match for "The Congregation", the collection of stations orbiting the old sun that are the setting for all 3 Revenger novels.
This is the third of the series. It is probably readable as a standalone novel, but it would somewhat spoil the other two, as there is essentially one big story arc.
The book is first and foremost an adventure story about two middle-class sisters who run away to become space pirates. There is also musings about deep time and the flow / cycle of history that will be familiar to readers of Revelation Space.
Technologically the setting is a bit steampunkish, with most of the locomotion involving solar sails, and fairly primitive space vehicles. This is interspersed with a variety of artifacts from older/distant civilizations, …
Reynolds fans will be sputtering at the title, since of course the Glitter Band of his own Revelation Space universe is also a good match for "The Congregation", the collection of stations orbiting the old sun that are the setting for all 3 Revenger novels.
This is the third of the series. It is probably readable as a standalone novel, but it would somewhat spoil the other two, as there is essentially one big story arc.
The book is first and foremost an adventure story about two middle-class sisters who run away to become space pirates. There is also musings about deep time and the flow / cycle of history that will be familiar to readers of Revelation Space.
Technologically the setting is a bit steampunkish, with most of the locomotion involving solar sails, and fairly primitive space vehicles. This is interspersed with a variety of artifacts from older/distant civilizations, and a few early-20th century electronics.
The characters are interesting for being ethically nuanced. Even the bankers turn out to be not completely evil, although mostly so. The main characters are engaging enough that at least this reader cared whether they lived or died.
The plot is a bit like a roller coaster in that some of the ups and downs you see coming, but there always tends to be one more reversal of fortune to keep you reading. I did stop once or twice to take a breather, so I guess the plotting succeeded as (the audiobook equivalent of) a page turner.
There is some space-opera style big reveals, but although those were interesting enough, I would not say they are the main reason to read this book.
The world building does seem mostly quite original and always well crafted. Towards the end of the book I did start to see more echos of Revelation space, but I think this could be seen as related to the "end of series big picture explanation" above.
Not sure what to make of this; not great, not terrible, not focused on the most interesting things, suffering from Reynolds' problem with unsympathetic protagonists. That guy really wants to write about psychopaths...
