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A review by themanfromdelmonte
Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds
3.0
I downloaded this on Kindle on the back of quoted reviews on Amazon e.g.
“Pirates in space, full of peril and high-jinks... This is a novel that's elegantly plotted …” “This is a story to break hearts and make you turn pages.” “... the mapping of Age of Sail tropes onto space travel is just the start...”
Nope, didn’t get any of that.
This is a relativistic universe, even the local neighbourhood is vast beyond imagining, but there’s no sense of it here, just climb in the suspended animation casket and off you go. If this is Thursday, this must be AX Microscopii.
The protagonist plods stodgily from one scenario to the next. There’s no real sense of peril or doubt that he’s going to succeed.
Along the way, secondary characters are discarded freely, without a huge amount of distress. Poor old Snowdrop, eh? Still, time to get out of Dodge. Laters!
The pirate theme might refer to the encounter with the Swine Queen (or whatever her name was) at Chasm City I suppose, but then I rather skated over the cannibalistic grossness of that chapter.
There’s a series of flashbacks that add nothing to the story (read Fred Pohl’s ‘Gateway’ to see how this should be done) and a series of reveals that are sadly anti climactic. So the Nestbuilders have been hollowed out by Slugs. But wait! A renegade Slug is onside. *Sigh* I was beyond caring at this point.
I used to love hard SF. Larry Niven was my go-to back in the day. Then it was cyberpunk and William Gibson. Then I came across Lois McMaster Bujold. I think you can see the direction of travel. I’m just an old romantic. Unless I can invest in the characters, I don’t care about the gadgetry and this book is much more about the ‘what’ than the ‘who’. So there’s nothing for me in this book with its hyper-this and its hyper-that.
“Pirates in space, full of peril and high-jinks... This is a novel that's elegantly plotted …” “This is a story to break hearts and make you turn pages.” “... the mapping of Age of Sail tropes onto space travel is just the start...”
Nope, didn’t get any of that.
This is a relativistic universe, even the local neighbourhood is vast beyond imagining, but there’s no sense of it here, just climb in the suspended animation casket and off you go. If this is Thursday, this must be AX Microscopii.
The protagonist plods stodgily from one scenario to the next. There’s no real sense of peril or doubt that he’s going to succeed.
Along the way, secondary characters are discarded freely, without a huge amount of distress. Poor old Snowdrop, eh? Still, time to get out of Dodge. Laters!
The pirate theme might refer to the encounter with the Swine Queen (or whatever her name was) at Chasm City I suppose, but then I rather skated over the cannibalistic grossness of that chapter.
There’s a series of flashbacks that add nothing to the story (read Fred Pohl’s ‘Gateway’ to see how this should be done) and a series of reveals that are sadly anti climactic. So the Nestbuilders have been hollowed out by Slugs. But wait! A renegade Slug is onside. *Sigh* I was beyond caring at this point.
I used to love hard SF. Larry Niven was my go-to back in the day. Then it was cyberpunk and William Gibson. Then I came across Lois McMaster Bujold. I think you can see the direction of travel. I’m just an old romantic. Unless I can invest in the characters, I don’t care about the gadgetry and this book is much more about the ‘what’ than the ‘who’. So there’s nothing for me in this book with its hyper-this and its hyper-that.