Revelation Space

Alastair Reynolds's first novel is "hard" SF on an epic scale, crammed with technological marvels and immensities. Its events take place over a relatively short period, but have roots a billion years old--when the Dawn War ravaged our galaxy.

Sylveste is the only man ever to return alive and sane from a Shroud, an enclave in space protected by awesome gravity-warping defences: "a folding a billion times less severe should have required more energy than was stored in the entire rest-mass of the galaxy." Now an intuition he doesn't understand makes him explore the dead world Resurgam, whose birdlike natives long ago tripped some booby-trap that made their own sun erupt in a deadly flare.

Meanwhile, the vast, decaying lightship Nostalgia for Infinity is coming for Sylveste, whose dead father (in AI simulation) could perhaps help the Captain, frozen near absolute zero yet still suffering monstrous transformation by nanotech plague. Most of Infinity's tiny crew have hidden agendas--Khouri the reluctant contract-assassin believes she must kill Sylveste to save humanity--and there are two bodiless stowaways, one no longer human and one never human. Shocking truths emerge from bluff, betrayal and ingenious lies.

The trail leads to a neutron star where an orbiting alien construct has defences to challenge the Infinity's planet-wrecking superweapons.

At the heart of this artefact, the final revelations detonate--most satisfyingly. Dense with information and incident, this longish novel has no surplus fat and seems almost too short. A sparkling SF debut. --David Langford

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Brilliant - Rated
Most of these reviews seem pretty long so I'll keep it brief.
An excellent book, lots of interesting ideas constantly weaved through it, Reynolds clearly has the love and of science and sense of how cool science can be that a sci-fi writer really needs to make maths and science cool.
Can sometimes be a little slow but usually makes up for it very quickly.
Likable characters of standard sci-fi fare but much better realized and more polished than usual.
Brilliant ending that tackles big issues and takes your breath away with its sheer magnitude.
Not a book for the faint heated, it demands a lot from you but is still accessible for technophobes and math haters and will give big rewards to those willing to make an effort.
Don't be scared give it a go, any minor flaws it may have will be overwhelmed by its beauty as a whole, like an impressionist painting, its about the big picture.

Class of its own. (Iain M Banks an exception) - Rated
I picked up a copy of Absolution Gap in a charity shop and it spent around 6 months languishing on the shelf while I read what I thought were better books.

Once opened though I spent the first 3 hours reading the next on Amazon buying all his other works. This and others pure class.

The only other author I get as excited about when a new book is on the way is Iain M Banks (Sci-fi and others). If you like this try his as well.

Absolutely Fantastic - Rated
I absolutely loved Revelation Space - best book I have read in ages - and I also enjoyed the other books in the series, including the short story collections.

Keep up the good work, Alastair!

A good read - Rated
Revelation Space was recommended to me by a colleague who watches the same types of TV reads some similar books etc and I enjoyed it. The interlinked stories had enough complexity to keep me interested and the ideas are grounded enough to make sense taking human nature into account. It isn't a great work of literature, but the writing is good enough to allow the story to flow and I like kick ass women so having Khouri and Volyova centre stage who can both think and fire a big gun worked for me.

Good enough for me to have ordered the other parts of the trilogy, and Chasm City as follow up reads.

interesting ideas but poorly written - Rated
Perhaps I'd been spoiled by reading China Mieville and Iain M Banks before this, but I found the dialogue and character development to be very poor, the plot chronology confusingly explained (especially initially) and the general atmosphere and scene descriptions to be dull and uninspired. After a few hundred pages I was still waiting to be grabbed by the story but persevered, in fact it was probably a good 2/3 of the way through before I actually started to care about any of the characters, and then only in the most passing sense and it was only really a curiosity of where all this meandering was going that kept me reading. It's not that it's a bad tale and there are some nice ideas in there, but it's really poorly written and lacking in any warmth. Overall, pretty disappointing. I picked this up on the cheap along with the more recent 'Century Rain' - I'll give that a bash to see if the author has improved over time, but my hopes are not high.