Reviews

Revelation Space is another of those books I started reading last year, got half way through, and read the second half like six months later after having finished a whole lot of other books in between.

Today I'm heading back home so I thought I'd finish and return my friend's copy before leaving, and I did.

And I very much enjoyed it, although hard sci-fi isn't as much my bread and butter as epic fantasy. My all time favourite fantasy series are interrogations of character as much as they are allegories for real world power dynamics or explorations of the impact of war on the psyche, to name but two examples. In my reading of Reynolds, character and theme seem secondary to the /ideas/ being explored, and that took some getting used to.

I enjoyed the extent to which Reynolds' ideas were conceptually fascinating and just close enough to actually plausible to make me wonder about possible future technology and how the real people of the 26th century will look back on us backwards people living in ye olde 21st century.

I also really enjoyed how Reynolds managed to surprise me, although I won't be more specific than that to avoid spoilers.

I'm interested to read more of Reynolds at some point, but I need to be in a specific mindset to read hard sci-fi.

Given that I choose to rank books very subjectively, this book is being ranked lower than it would be by a fan of hard sci-fi purely because I prefer more character-focused books. But I get that that wasn't what Reynolds was going for. I rank books on how much I (subjectively) enjoy to read them as opposed to just how successful I think they were at what they were trying to do, and although the ideas explored were absolutely mindblowing, I didn't really care about or get the chance to know the characters in general.

And thus, I give Revelation Space 3.75 stars.

lucardus's review against another edition

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3.0

Im Prinzip eine gute Space Opera mit Hard-Science-Einschlag ganz nach meinem Geschmack. Aber irgendwie fehlt mir zum 4-Sterne-Buch etwas Mitreißendes, die Charaktere waren mir relativ gleichgültig, und manchmal hatte ich das Gefühl, es zieht sich etwas. Ich werde höchstwahrscheinlich mehr von Reynolds lesen, aber nach dem, was ich zuvor an Lobeshymnen gelesen hatte, bin ich etwas enttäuscht.

detrimental's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

patrick_l's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

jstatt's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Gotta be one of the best sci-fi books I've ever read. There are concepts in this book that I've never experienced in any other sci-fi, and I love it. It's mostly a slow paced book until about the last 15-20%, then it all really picks up the pace.

Really looking forward reading the next book.

frazsaysyes's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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