The one about a land war on an isolated and technologicallyretrograded colony world, with shadowy aliens working behind thescenes.. . . Yeah, no. This book is a study in how social justiceawareness isn’t transitive. Buckell’s name got tossed around a lot acouple years ago in race fail because he’s an author of color who, mygoodness, writes nonfaily science fiction about people of color. Whatno one told me was that he simultaneously fails at disability. Hefails at disability like a boss, you guys...

4.0 to 4.5 stars. Excellent debut novel. Fantastic world-building (much of which is only hinted at or briefly disclosed in this novel), great characters (with "Pepper" going on the list of one of the best characters of recent years) and a good story. Recommended.

An entertaining, quick-moving sci-fi adventure. John deBrun suffers from amnesia. He has no idea where he's from or who he used to be. He was found by the inhabitants of Nanagada, descendants of Caribbean emigrants, and taken into their community. After time, he has made a rewarding life for himself, married a woman that he loves and had a son.Do you think this peace and happiness is going to last? (All together now: "NO!")Soon enough, it's discovered that the brutal and warlike Azteca have tunn...

Well, for various reasons I’ve not been reading as much as usual, and my ‘to read’ pile has been stacking up. First on my list upon returning to it was Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell. It’s always a little worrying reading a book by an author you’ve had contact with since you always feel the urge to say something nice even if you don’t mean it. I’ve tried to hammer down on that over the last few years. Now I will only comment on a book if it is one that grabs me and keeps me focused on it through...

This is first rate SF, blending exciting action with interesting ideas in a plot that is paced beautifully. Buckell fits a lot into these 350 pages.It's difficult to reveal much plot, because the author does such a nice job of slowly unveiling the history of his characters and world throughout the book. A man named John DeBrun who lives with his wife and son in a small jungle village on an island world called Nanagada has a rough past. He led a seafaring voyage north on behalf of his government

I love adventure stories, and this is an all-out adventure with airships, steam-augmented sailing ships, spacecraft, war, a range of settings that includes city, ocean, jungle, arctic, and alpine, and great characters, some with their own mysteries that are gradually untangled. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

3.5 stars, really. There are plenty of good ideas here, and some interesting characters. As a first novel, it's very good. But something about it wasn't quite right. Perhaps it's that despite the unique ideas, large parts of what followed from each idea seemed predictable. "John, you have to go north." "Don't wanna." Ha. As if there was ever any chance that he wouldn't. Perhaps - and this is not Buckell's fault - I have had enough of "We're surrounded by a vastly superior force! We're doomed! We...

I did not realize that Ragamuffin was the sequel to this one, but it quickly became obvious to me. It wasn't too much of a problem; they're both capable of standing on their own. It was a bit odd to know the eventual fate of the characters, though.In contrast with Ragamuffin, the characters in this one felt slightly more introspective. Part of that is because John deBrun has amnesia, and consequently spends a fair amount of time wondering about himself. Pepper seems more roguish and dangerous (a...

This book has many good ideas, and is well researched at a cultural level (its Rastas Vs. Aztecs as they have colonized a planet in the future but lapsed into circa 1900s tech because of some apocolyptic event). The main character is John DeBrun and he's multidimensional, and interesting. He's somewhat unique in that he is a father and not a teen doing self-discovery.Also, the Aztec gods are creepy aliens, and the only way to fight them is when you have bionic implants. But the pacing lags becau...

I've been hearing about Tobias S. Buckell's Xenowealth series for years and finally got around to it last month. My schedule made reading time difficult to find, so it probably suffered somewhat from that, but overall, I really enjoyed Crystal Rain, book 1 in the Xenowealth series.John DeBrun has no memory of his past, but there are a few odd things he's realized about himself, such as the fact that he doesn't seem to age or get sick (unbreakable!). We find him established with a wife and son an...

Crystal Rain has a few minor flaws, but it’s a fun novel with an interesting setting that can best be described as Caribbean steam-punk. The novel takes place on a distant, former colony world that was undergoing terraforming. About 300 years prior to the events in the novel, an interstellar war spilled over into the solar system where the world is located. In desperation, one side in the conflict set off a massive EMP burst that fried every computer and circuit board in the system. All ships an...

I think I'm setting this aside after including it in a speed-dating project. I feel bad because I've met the author and he signed it... I talk more about why here.... care to tell me to try again?

Uniqueness can be a difficult thing to find in fantasy literature, as most novels follow the general archetypes. The medieval English setting established in the Sir Thomas Malory’s classic “Le Morte d’Arthur” has been grossly overused in the genre. So it is immensely refreshing to discover a fantasy/sci-fi novel that revolves around a Caribbean/South American type of setting. Creativity is a wonderful thing.“Crystal Rain”, the strong debut novel by Tobias S. Buckell, is a unique hybrid that atte...

With Crystal Rain, Buckell creates a crazy mish-mash of fantasy, myth, and sci-fi. All of which is wrapped up in the enigma: Who the heck is John deBrun?He's a man with a hook. A fisherman. A family man. But he must be so much more since gods, spies, and a strange guy in a top hat are all hunting for him. The different factions think John can provide important information, but all he has is a case of amnesia.The mystery of his true identity ties all the story threads together, but it's not the o...

This book was so much fun to read. Imagine another planet inhabited by Caribbean people and Aztecs. Imagine “gods” that require blood sacrifices. Imagine a world settled by humans who get cut off from the rest of humanity and have lost most of their technology and whose origins are the stuff of myth and legend. This is the setting of "Crystal Rain" by Tobias Buckell. When you read as much genre fiction as I do, you start recognizing the formulas and get pretty good at determining where the story...

RatingReview*** This review originally appeared on Out of this World Reviews. ***Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell is the first novel of Buckell's set in his Caribbean-style sci-fi world. Buckell himself is a native of that region of the world, though he now resides in landlocked Ohio. You can follow the author on his blog. Buckell contributed a Pepper story to the Seeds of Change anthology, of which I received an advanced reader copy and reviewed. I also previously reviewed Sly Mongoosewhich is th...

A fantastic debut novel by Tobias Buckell! The story takes place on a distant planet called Nanagada and is about the descendants of the Aztecs, appropriately called the Azteca, launching an attack on the descendants of Caribbean settlers on the planet. In a desperate move to stop the Azteca, an expedition, led by the mysterious John deBraun, heads north to find a fabled weapon that could be their only chance to halt the attack. All the while, mysterious alien beings lurk in the background, mani...

The Azteca have finally found a way across the Wicked High Mountains and are descending upon Capital City, slaughtering all the Nanagadans that get in their way. The young mayor of Capital City has plans, but all they will do is delay the Azteca. The Nanagandans' only hope is that the explorer John deBrun can find a mythical artifact from long ago, the Ma Wi Jung. Helping John is the bioengineered (to be AWESOME) Pepper, while an Azteca spy skulks undetected in hopes of hindering their quest.The...

I picked up Crystal Rain because I happened upon the sequel, and wanted to read this one first. Now that I understand how little connection there is between the two, I'm not certain that it helped. I still don't understand why the police of this world are called "Ragamuffins"...The basic premise is that a very odd combination of human ethnic groups ended up settling a colony planet, then got cut off from Earth. Aliens, who were at the heart of the reason for them being cut off, molded the differ...

Interesting read. Basically Aztec Gods as aliens on a distant colony world stuck behind a destroyed wormhole. I apparently read book in this series some time ago and I guess I didn't realize it was part of a series, even a loose one. It had interesting pacing, readable but slow. And the interesting technology was almost always just barely off screen. There was also some pretty definite use of a Caribbean dialect. Nothing about this really blew me away. But it hints of possibilities in an author