Pushing Ice

[ewx]

naath bought me Pushing Ice for my birthday, which I have now read.

There's some familiar Reynolds ideas - human characters encountering technology far beyond their own culture; powerful aliens with questionable motives; important off-stage action; intense personal and societal politics within the human communities.

The book opens with a chase of a moon-sized quest object, with a definite hint of Rendezvous with Rama. Success in this, however, turns out to be a highly mixed blessing, with consequences that give the story a more claustrophobic in feel than the Revelation Space series in the medium and longer terms.

There's a couple of points where I wasn't quite convinced by the actions of some of the characters. In the first example this could reasonably be put down to the viewpoint we get; in the second there is simply not enough suspicion from someone who ought to know better by that point in the story.

That aside, I stayed up far too late reading it last night, which is generally a good sign l-)

Comments

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Ooooh! I can finish that off now that I CAN READ.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Yay! You liked it!

I thought it was a bit 'rendevous with Rama' the whole way through, only, you know, better written.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

It's a long since I read RwR but I recall feeling that it didn't really go anywhere. (Without wanting to post spoilers...) PI does indeed do better on that front.

I wonder if it's a one-off or if there are sequels to come? There's several obvious starting points...

I figured out the purpose of the structure at Spica before it was made clear, and also just what had happened to Jim Chisholm. Granted both were telegraphed, particularly the latter, but I was still quite pleased to twig before it was stated in both case.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

RwR seemed fun, and like it was the first third of a longer book. And there were promising sequels. That slowly turned into something really awful. I should try this one.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I was confused by the first chapter about what the ending was going to look like. RwR has sequels and it goes places. All really bad, this was a much better written book.

I'm not sure if he intends more, clearly there *could* be more but I'm not sure if it's not better to just leave it at that.