Blue Remembered Earth - Alastair Reynolds
I realised recently that Alastair Reynolds has quietly become one of my favourite authors. Blue Remembered Earth is probably my least favourite of his books that I've read so far, but that's like saying it's my least favourite Comeback Kid album. There are no bad Comeback Kid albums, and one of them has to be bottom of the list. (It's Turn It Around, for those interested. I know that's tantamount to blasphemy.)
This has all the hallmarks of a Reynolds classic. Weird alien artifacts left behind by a race that's probably long dead? Yes. A race across the solar system in an improbable craft? Yes. A ton of science that feels real and probably but that's explained in a way that's easy to follow for people who don't understand science (me)? Yes. Complex characters making decisions with very limited information? Also yes.
I haven't read enough of Reynolds' back catalogue to know if he always wrote thrillers of if he slowly slipped towards that form over time. I don't remember Pushing Ice being a thriller really, and so I suspect it's the latter. Blue Remembered Earth feels like an early step towards writing SF thrillers, and it's maybe a little bit of a stumbling step. This is very deliberately plotted, but it's a plot that shows its seams. A common criticism of Reynolds' prose is that he's very workmanlike, and this book is a good example of that.
That's particularly true in the middle of the book, in the sequences that take place on Mars and in the underwater nations. Both of those sequences feel very "built", very deliberately designed to move the plot forwards without offering us much yet. It's the closest I've come to feeling like a part of a Reynolds book was "filler", and it's the first time I've found myself wishing that he'd just get on with it.
But then he does get on with it and we're back to classic Al, and we end on a really warm, hopeful note that also sets us up brilliantly to take a step into the rest of this series. This is ultimately a book about remembering where home is, and about the desire to always have a place to come back to, and it's really nice.
Not a perfect book, then, but there's no such thing as a bad Alastair Reynolds book (at least not yet, in my experience), and I still really enjoyed this.