[REVIEW] Century Rain
Apr. 6th, 2005 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldIt is the year 2267, on the planet Earth. Verity Auger, archeologist and citizen of the United States of Near Earth, is in a Paris encased by hundreds of metres of ice and populated by a voracious nanotechnological ecology, searching with two apprentices for the chance artifact that may have survived the Nanocaust. Something goes wrong; one of her apprentices is killed without anything to show for it. Sent before a tribunal that has the power to end her career, Auger is rescued. She's needed for a special mission in a sensitive situation, it seems.
It is the year 1959, on Earth-2. Wendell Floyd--American expatriate, veteran of the Franco-German war of 1940, jazz aficionado, private detective--is in Paris, investigating the mysterious death of one Susan White. Found dead outside her apartment building, her death was judged a suicide by a French police force infected by the rising tide of fascism, but her landlord insists that White would not have killed herself. She was so busy exploring Paris and reporting back to her correspondents (presumably Americans) that murder, Blanchard believes, is the only possible explanation.
Alistair Reynolds' award-winning novel Century Rain may well be his best novel to date. It adroitly combines space opera with alternate history, mutated technothriller with a rather entertaining noir romance. I'm loathe to reveal any more of the plot than I already have, but suffice it to say that the value of a living and populated Earth to an advanced but Earth-less human future should be neither underestimated nor misestimated.
One thing that I particularly like about Century Rain is Reynolds' narrative voice. In Revelation Space and following stories, he promptly immerses the reader deep in a sea of confusing environments and events, forcing the observer to determine what's going on entirely without authorial aid. I found this style to be rather more alienating and aggravating than enlightening, particularly in his longer stories. Not so Century Rain, where it was full of resonances hinting at a past and a future that was critically unknown to everyone concerned in their entirety. Reynolds' in media res worked here, I believe, since we can relate to mid-20th century Paris--even a slightly tweaked mid-20th century Paris--more easily than we can to, say, far-future Epsilon Eridanite or 61 Cygnan civilizations, though the contribution made by the presence of familiar conventions from the noir and mystery genres shouldn't be discounted.
When I finished Century Rain, I briefly wished that Reynolds would write a sequel. I now hope that he doesn't, for that novel's complete within itself and its universe needs no further elaboration to do it justice. Would that all contemporary science fiction could claim the same perfect craftsmanship.
It is the year 1959, on Earth-2. Wendell Floyd--American expatriate, veteran of the Franco-German war of 1940, jazz aficionado, private detective--is in Paris, investigating the mysterious death of one Susan White. Found dead outside her apartment building, her death was judged a suicide by a French police force infected by the rising tide of fascism, but her landlord insists that White would not have killed herself. She was so busy exploring Paris and reporting back to her correspondents (presumably Americans) that murder, Blanchard believes, is the only possible explanation.
Alistair Reynolds' award-winning novel Century Rain may well be his best novel to date. It adroitly combines space opera with alternate history, mutated technothriller with a rather entertaining noir romance. I'm loathe to reveal any more of the plot than I already have, but suffice it to say that the value of a living and populated Earth to an advanced but Earth-less human future should be neither underestimated nor misestimated.
One thing that I particularly like about Century Rain is Reynolds' narrative voice. In Revelation Space and following stories, he promptly immerses the reader deep in a sea of confusing environments and events, forcing the observer to determine what's going on entirely without authorial aid. I found this style to be rather more alienating and aggravating than enlightening, particularly in his longer stories. Not so Century Rain, where it was full of resonances hinting at a past and a future that was critically unknown to everyone concerned in their entirety. Reynolds' in media res worked here, I believe, since we can relate to mid-20th century Paris--even a slightly tweaked mid-20th century Paris--more easily than we can to, say, far-future Epsilon Eridanite or 61 Cygnan civilizations, though the contribution made by the presence of familiar conventions from the noir and mystery genres shouldn't be discounted.
When I finished Century Rain, I briefly wished that Reynolds would write a sequel. I now hope that he doesn't, for that novel's complete within itself and its universe needs no further elaboration to do it justice. Would that all contemporary science fiction could claim the same perfect craftsmanship.
