Everywhere we see signs of decay and collapse, as the machinery that mankind has painstakingly developed over centuries rebels against humans and taken on a life of its own. Neither of the main characters is a likeable guy, and one is downright disgusting and despicable (in case you need to know). For your information we have compiled this document to explain some of the key events in our recent history.

the second storyline is in the past, following sky haussmann, a crewmember on a colonizer ship who helped establish the world that mirabel is running around in. I thought about it for days after I had read it, and my memories of its stand-out scenes still send shivers up my sci-fi loving spine.Chasm City has many of the same issues as Revelation Space – paper-thin characters and overly expository dialogue chief among them – but it’s still a pretty enjoyable dark sci-fi adventure, and I’m looking forward to getting back into the story of the main trilogy with Redemption Ark. We see this latter phenomenon in people who suffer from diseases like Alzheimer’s—but what if we willingly added or subtracted memories rather than lost them indiscriminately and uncontrollably?

plus, i’m much more of a journey-person than a destination-person, and to spend 500+ pages rolling my eyes at cringey dialogue and badly motivated characters was far too much trouble for a semi-slick 150 page payoff. Although numerous descriptions of technical appliances I found a little difficult to understand, and Tanner's character indeed verged to turn into obnoxious superman at times, the book will definitely keep you guessing till the very last chapter. Having recently finished another novel about a generation ship, I was struck by certain similarities (though I much prefer how Reynolds handled it). Wonderful tech, and civilisations falling from the grace given them by their tech when the Melding Plague takes over everything above a certain complexity.When hamadryads approach adulthood, they wrap themselves around trees and meld with the trunks, becoming part of the structure of the plant.

This book is a very intricately plotted sf novel with strong element of a noir thriller, but the emphasis is definitely on the sci-fi. Although it is sometimes labelled as Revelation Space book 2, they reckoned this was the best book and has the advantage of being readable as a standalone story. A complex second story deals with ideology and faith, inspiring to think about how future sects could develop their narrative, adding more Sci-Fi instead of old school hairy prophet stories with fantasy elements. Now, with the entire city corrupted -from the people to the very buildings they inhabit- only the most wretched sort of existence remains.Tanner¿s pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone.

Of course, by that point the true nature of Tanner’s complicated identity issues has been revealed, changing everything. Whatever the case, there are certainly issues here with characterization; I can ignore them, though, because the rest of the book is just so good. One of the characters, the name I forget ( some kind of mushroom I think ), performs a startling about-face and happily joins Tanner Mirabel ( the 'hero' ) along with some other previous Tanner haters in their final battle against the 'end-of-level' baddie. in the end, i could ramble on about this book’s faults for ages, but how much you enjoy this book will probably depend on how much you will appreciate the last fifth of the book, and how you interpret the true themes and mirabel’s journey as a character. Along with his own memories, Tanner begins having intense, realistic dreams that remember parts of the life of Sky Haussmann, the vilified founder of Sky’s Edge.The chase requires quite a bit of interstellar travel, part of which is even on a space elevator which brings to mind Arthur C. We all have triggers, certain topics in our beloved genres that instantly make us sit up and pay attention. We have found that attempts to gloss over or understate the truth of what happened – of what continues to happen – are ultimately harmful; that the best approach – based on a statistical study of cases such as yours – is to present the facts in as open and honest manner as possible. Gone are the simple plots and tropes of your typical TV sci-fi, there is crazyness and creativity at every turn within these pages.