Target: Alastair Reynolds’ Blue Remembered Earth
Profile: Science Fiction, Space Opera
I’ve mentioned this before, but Alastair Reynolds’ novels leave me a little bewildered. The scope of his settings are daunting and even Blue Remembered Earth, a book that starts and finishes within our own solar system and a scant 150 years in the future, promises to have gotten just as big by the time we get to the end of the Poseidon’s Children series. Reynolds packs a lot of interesting ideas into this opening novel, but the plot seems to get pushed aside to make room for it all.
Not that Blue Remembered Earth is bad. It feels like its setting up for something really interesting and, like a lot of setup stories, it doesn’t quite stand on its own. Reynolds’ attention to detail draws a compelling map to the stars and the future of humanity, but the reason we keep turning pages has nothing to do with Geoffrey Akinya or his sister, Sunday.
Cannonball Read V 