nicanical
Originally titled The Prefect and first of the Prefect Dreyfus series set within Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space universe, Aurora Rising gives readers a glimpse at the Belle Epoque talked about in other books in the series.
Pacing is good. Good cycles of tension and relief entice readers along. Character development is shallow but the magic here is in Reynolds's worldbuilding. The characters only need depth enough to push buttons and pull levers to show the world as a living, interactive thing. There may even be too many characters. Thalia, for example, is locked up in a polling core and languishes for awhile perhaps because Reynolds didn't know what to do with her. Sparver, too. He's present early on, disappears, then conveniently rematerializes just as Dreyfus embarks on a suicide mission.
Some conversations are thinly-veiled replacements for exposition. These read artificially, like an interview where all the questions are softballs. It's a minor thing. I mention it only because it's not a problem I recall with other books in Revelation Space.
Originally titled The Prefect and first of the Prefect Dreyfus series set within Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space universe, Aurora Rising gives readers a glimpse at the Belle Epoque talked about in other books in the series.
Pacing is good. Good cycles of tension and relief entice readers along. Character development is shallow but the magic here is in Reynolds's worldbuilding. The characters only need depth enough to push buttons and pull levers to show the world as a living, interactive thing. There may even be too many characters. Thalia, for example, is locked up in a polling core and languishes for awhile perhaps because Reynolds didn't know what to do with her. Sparver, too. He's present early on, disappears, then conveniently rematerializes just as Dreyfus embarks on a suicide mission.
Some conversations are thinly-veiled replacements for exposition. These read artificially, like an interview where all the questions are softballs. It's a minor thing. I mention it only because it's not a problem I recall with other books in Revelation Space.