If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.you can read the full review.Steampunk Riff SF: "Revenger" by Alastair ReynoldsI've literally just finished the book and put it down, and I'm still reeling. Two sisters go on a space quest; get separated in an atrocious event; and then one of them seeks the other as well as revenge for the said appalling event. Sound familiar? I'm just out of the latest Reynolds after the wonderful short story collection, and this latest installment co...

Revenger was definitely entertaining and un-puttable down till the end though it clearly read to me as the start of a series not a standalone;a few observations that came to mind when reading it - reminded most of C. Mieville's Railsea than anything from A. Reynolds, strong YA vibe, though violent but otherwise lots of stuff YA style (especially the part in the middle back on Mazarile which was weakest of the novel imho as it read straight out YA parental struggle drama), narrator makes or break...

4.5 stars.Space pirates, antiheroes and ancient dead civilisations? That sound perfect to you? Me too. Arafura Ness is drawn by her sister from the safety of their comfortable and cushy life into the uncertainties of the Bone Room on a treasure hunters space cruiser. Sensitive to the bones of an ancient creature, such bone readers are able to communicate across vast distances and carve out the secrets of the stars. When the dread Bosa Sennen kidnaps Fura’s Sister, she is forced to take action in...

(Audiobook)From the Guardian: As banks struggle and businesses collapse, the science fiction writer Alastair Reynolds is making his own contribution to the flagging UK economy, signing an unprecedented 10-book deal with Gollancz worth £1m.Reynolds, who has published eight novels with the Orion imprint Gollancz since his 2000 debut, Revelation Space, said he was "amazed and thrilled" to commit himself to the same publisher for the next decade. "It gives me a huge amount of security for the next 1...

5 Stars Revenger by Alastair Reynolds can almost do no wrong with me. I love his writing style, his pacing, and of course his genre, science fiction. This book is something that none of his other books are, including The Blue Remembered Earth series, it is accessible to all, including the young adult crowd. That does not mean that Revenger is written down to them, or watered down. It just means that it is easily digested.Comparisons to Mieville's Railsea, and the Shipbreaker series by Paolo Baci...

Aside from some very amusing and possibly very *accurate* rants about this book, namely that the dialogue is sometimes *crappy*, the sciencey-bits are rather *weak*, and the fact that the made up words are pretty damn *generic*, most of the tale is *still* better than sooooooo much of the adventure space-opera out there.Is it YA? Good question. Probably. But it's middle teens at the very worst. Expect pretty cool violence throughout, a single-minded protagonist girl, and a basic premise where th...

I picked up Revenger forewarned with the knowledge that this book was Alastair Reynolds first foray into the YA market. I must admit I had high hopes for Revenger. I was hoping we would get a book packed with the great world building and interesting plots of Reynolds regular hard sci-fi books but with the added bonus of the story having a more character driven focus. Unfortunately that never quite materialized. What we actually got was Reynolds trying, and failing, at character driven sci-fi whi...

People seem to be very divided on this book. I will say at the outset that this is the first thing I have read by Reynolds, and I'm also a fan of YA Sci-Fi, which means I was pretty well placed to enjoy the story.This is a typical coming of age story, with a main character, Fura, whose experiences remake her into a very different person than she imagined herself to be. It very much follows the idea of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The core of the story is really one of transformation...

Did Not Finish (DNF).I'm a big fan of Alastair Reynolds and have read many of his books. Chasm City and several, but not all in the Revelation Space series being particular favorites.This book was a hard start. Firstly, it is a lame attempt at YA. Although, it was my mistake in not realizing that the author had plunged into the monied killing-ground of YA authorship with this book.The technical craftsmanship of the book is all good. Reynolds always knows how to hang words together.Where the stor...

Oh gods! What have you done Mr Reynolds? Let me start off by saying that I am a Reynolds fan. I have read a lot of his books and rate him as one of the best hard scifi writers out there. Whilst his characters can be found wanting at times, his huge stories and world building skills are excellent and you are never short of having your head turned inside out with technical details.Then came this book. My theory was, that he wrote this when he was a teenager and it never go published, so now he is

This trilogy about the Ness sisters, Adrana and Fura, is perfect for fans of The Expanse (of which I am one) and fans of space pirate stories (and really, who isn't a fan of space pirates?). It took me a while to get my footing in the story, since the world is so different and there is much new lingo to learn, but what a fascinating premise! The old solar system has been exploded to create a vast field of rubble, with thousands of planetoids upon which the remains of humanity live (and a few ali...

* I was sent this book for review from the publisher *This is such a fun storyline! I have to say I was a little hesitant to dive into this becuase, although I had heard good things, I don't like super high-tech science books and I didn't want this to turn out to be like that. It's not! This is actually one of the most interesting and fun SF books I have ever read and it had a fabulous mix of superb characters, space pirating and action. The plot was fast-paced, but easy to settle into, and it w...

*** 2.65 ***A Buddy Read with my fellow Sci-Fi enthusiasts at BB&B! We just wanted some Science Fiction!!!.... But we didn't realy get what we were expecting... Alastair Reynolds is known for his Science Fiction/ Space Opera stuff, which is usually very good on world building and mostly action driven. Imagine my surprise when I started reading and the two main protagonist were two teenage sisters, who find out they have some obscure talent to read "bones" and can be hired on spaceships in order

I’m not a fan of YA, generally because, in most of them, the action does not fit the characters’ age. The story of Fura Ness here is not far from that; had she been around her 30s, I think it would have made the story and her actions much more reliable.However, as always, the universe in which Al Reynolds unfolds his tale is a marvel to me and so I chose to focus on that instead. We have a Congregation build of around 50 million worlds, in the 13th Occupation (the 12th was around ~600,000 years

1ish stars.This book is one giant identity crisis. It's totally marketed as an adult sci-fi thriller. The blurb teases space pirates. Look at that cool black cover with the bold lettering and the title... Revenger. Sounds sick. Start reading and oh wait... this reads like a kid's book... with lots of mutilation... that's 400 pages long. It took me a while to get my bearings and decide whether I was actually enjoying it or not. As it turns out, nope.I almost get the impression that Reynolds decid...

My new editor understands my needs, and was kind enough to send me an ARC of this book. And folks, it's a cracker. Basically, it's TREASURE ISLAND meets MOBY DICK, set in space, with a nice BLADE RUNNER-ish colour palette and a cast of characters worthy of a Terry Gilliam movie. I loved it. I don't give out stars, but coves, there are baubles aplenty in this, as well as blood, tears, a damn fine swashbuckling female villain and many lungstuff-sapping moments. I'm hoping there's a sequel. If not,...

Ok so this is YA. Who knew? Wait, what? Everyone but me.... Oh ok. First, a compliment (kinda).What a great set of covers this series has (whoever designed those outperformed the author on this one). Second, the rest.The essential problem is that Reynolds seems to be trying to force his writing into a stereotypical version of YA rather than playing to his strengths in world building and innovation. All he did was dumb down and it shows.So you've got these two young sisters who have a decent enou...

This new book by Reynolds is set in a cargo-cult, semi-steampunk kind of universe, at times familiar. At first, I found the book to be a bit too-familiar in nature, but by chapter 3 the world- and character-building were good, and the plot mysteries were intriguing.As always, Reynolds' imagination is amazing, and the number of minor and major clever elements were terrific. Pacing is good, without being overwritten, and the penultimate chapters and action sequences were fun.The final chapter was

Reynolds tale of two young sisters who stow away on a starship to escape the dreary future their father has planned for them starts off well enough, but starts getting predictable halfway through. There's a sort of "Daniel Defoe in space" vibe to it that is more admirable in the attempt than the execution.As usual, Reynolds follows Clarke's third law in his depiction of future and/or alien tech - that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - so the worldbuilding i...

2 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2017/03/12/...Revenger was my first book by Alastair Reynolds, which makes admitting that it did not work for me all that much harder. Still, in all fairness, I had been warned by several others beforehand that this does not feel representative of much of his work (as apparently the target audience is YA). Instead of choosing something else as my introduction to the author though, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try it anyway...