Masterpiece ( )

Have you ever fell asleep in a dream and in that sleep you start dreaming, only to fall asleep in that dream and start dreaming again.   But then you wake up from that final dream and a new day begins, but it's just soooo fucked up you can't understand what's going wrong with the world: because you thought you'd actually woken up because you forgot you fell asleep within a dream within a dream and you haven't actually woke up, woke up, you just woke up within the next dream level up, you're still dreaming.   And it takes a while to realise what the fuck is going on.   If that's never happened to you then you're really missing out a wonderful mind fuck.

It's just like what happens in the film Inception, they go to sleep and dream, then go to sleep and dream and then go to sleep and dream, in order to get so far down the rabbit hole in order to get the thing they want.

And yes, you can fall asleep in dreams and then dream in that sleep and so on.   It's freaky!

Why am i telling you this?   Because Silas Coade, our protagonist within Eversion, appears to be doing the same thing.   So if you liked that idea in Inception you might just really like this one as well, because this is just as good but in a much different way.   I can't tell you why it's different because it would totally ruin the story, you just have to believe me that it's really good and read it for yourself.

This is currently Alastair's last published novel and i've read everything else he's written apart from the young adult, nonsensical, Revenger trilogy, which i just couldn't cope with.   So now i sit eagerly awaiting the next great story from this master of science fiction: let's hope it's not too long in appearing.

Bye for now. ( )

Really twisty, sometimes a bit confusing, nevertheless I really enjoyed the surprises in this novel. ( )

I’ve read virtually everything that Alastair Reynolds have written, enjoying almost all of it. A few pages into this work, I checked the cover to make sure there was not some mistake; that this was, in fact, a Reynolds work. All of my previous experience with Reynolds was science fiction, and here I was, reading a book set on a 19th century sailing ship, making its way north, up the coast of Norway, searching for “the Edifice”, a huge, isolated structure, inexplicably located on the Arctic Circle.

Well, okay, that’s different, but the story progressed nicely through about 4-5 iterations, all with a similar theme (exploration of the Edifice), though through an advancing time line, until SURPRISE, you get to science fiction.

I’ve got to say that about ¾ of the way through the book, it had largely lost its novelty and I was ready for advancement of story line, which though it ultimately occurred, was less than stellar. Dreams within dreams gave the impression of a much simplified version of Inception. Not bad, just not great. ( )

A recurring search that becomes a self exploration.
It is almost too repetitive at first. There is just enough development to hold interest until the action begins to happen. The protagonist is a military doctor helping on the search for a strange artifact. It has become an all consuming search that repeats. over centuries of scientific progress. ( )