Book Review – Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

It was a good thing that I read this with a friend to make sure I hadn’t been hit on the head and didn’t think I was going crazy with all the issues I had with this book. My friend enjoyed it and started the next book as I slogged my way to the end, kicking and screaming. He admitted he saw some of the issues I had brought up, but enjoys the space opera over things like good characters or a compelling plot or feeling like a 700-page book should not “get going” halfway through. While I didn’t absolutely hate the book, there wasn’t enough there for me to enjoy it in the genre I love the best.

Reynolds uses his scientific background to craft a world that deals with a rarity in space opera sci-fi, and that’s a lack of FTL (Faster Than Light) travel. This adds to a type of time dilation that the reader has to keep track of and is somewhat an element to the story. Reynolds also uses a lack of alien contact as a plot point that I think would have worked out well in the hands of someone who could write characters that were worth caring about. From a SCIENCE fiction perspective, this has some high marks on setting up the big picture of the universe.

And where it comes crashing to the planet is the abysmal characters put forward. There are three plots that converge, each with its own character focus, and I’m not sure who exactly the main character is. I did not care about any of them and did not find either of the two main-ish characters, Sylveste and Khouri, to have any redeeming qualities to get me to like them. It seems like many of the characters are there just to info dump background, plot, and actions of off-screen characters onto the reader. Characters do not engage in believable dialogue and go on for extended periods of time even in the face of adversaries. Many times, characters will be have stuff explained to them for long, draw out periods and then right when it’s time for a revelation, that character will receive it but the reader won’t. There is not really an unfolding of the mystery and with so many plot points it’s hard to know which one I’m suppose to be caring about.

There are other characters and settings that I wasn’t sure why I needed to care or why they were there. Sylveste’s character has a revelation about his backstory that’s done about three-quarters of the way through the book, and it didn’t seem to matter all that much, and it’s in the midst of his wedding that just pops up all of a sudden. The worst is the captain of the Nostalgia for Infinity ship, along with the first mate, Volyova. There’s no real answer on where the ship came from, how it got the payload it did, why it’s important, or what orders it’s under.

The plot is also hurt by a lack of quality characters. Halfway through the book, I was still waiting for a plot to reveal itself. I found myself asking why I was even reading the book, as in, am I supposed to care about the missing aliens or the assassination attempt or this ship with world-ending weapons on it or this colony’s survival. I had no clue where I was being pointed to, and this resulted in being confused about what was going on or what the focus was. On top of the relativity of time, this did not help that fact.

As for the ending, it was ok. It had some aspect that was slightly unique. However, the motive given why a certain faction was engaging in mass genocide didn’t quite answer the next question of “but how does this help accomplish their ultimate goal?” and seems to be a hypocritical quagmire that this extremely intelligent force should have. Plus, the idea of “kill it all” rather than “maybe we can figure this out in the 3 billion years we have before we have to face the issue” seems like an obvious question that doesn’t even have a hand-wave-away answer to.

So while I didn’t hate the book and it had some good sci-fi aspects, the lack of quality characters and a plodding plot made not like the book that a number of people seemed to really enjoy. I doubt I’ll continue the series.