Alastair Reynolds – Revelation Space (Book 7 of 2015)
So as I was coming to the end of Alastair Reynold’s Revelation Space when I thought to myself; which character am I rooting for?? I image that it’s supposed to be Dan Sylveste, who throughout the book has been obsessed with the Amarantin civilization. A civilization that was destroyed 900,000 years ago! Sylveste has spent a lifetime on Resurgam trying to uncover what happened to the Amarantin civilization. From what he has uncovered it appeared that The Event that destroyed their civilization occurred shortly after the civilization had achieved space flight!
I don’t think I should be rooting for Ilia Volyova a member of the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity, who along with her crew are headed for Resurgam to capture Sylveste and his father Calvin to force them to help restore the Captain of their ship who is a victim of the melding plague and is now no more than an amorphous being!! And then there’s Khouri, an assassin who was recruited by the Mademoiselle to kill Sylveste. Why?
So after the first 300 or so pages, I felt like……
But I continued on and I think that around page 500 plus…… I think I finally understood what was happening maybe and then again maybe not?? Yes there were times when I thought that things were just a tad too confusing, especially when things went back and forward in time over the first half of the book, but like Sylveste I plodded on because I wanted to find out what was happening. I needed to know why the Sun Stealer wanted Sylveste to continue on and why Mademoiselle wanted him dead! Which side was the right side? Should Slyveste be stopped no matter what, what would happen if he did discover how the Amarantin civilization perished!
Bottom line: Revelation Space was a 3 out of 5 book for me. DId I like it, yes. Was the final resolution satisfying for the most part yes. Did it leave me thinking about the history of the universe. Yes? Do I want to read more books in the series? yes.I think really the main aspect of the boo that I didn’t like was that there really wasn’t any character that I cared about!
