Century Rain
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- 6,49 €
Publisher Description
Part SF thriller, part interstellar adventure, part noir crime, CENTURY RAIN is as astonishing bestseller from Alastair Reynolds
Three hundred years in the future, Verity Auger is a specialist in the archaeological exploration of Earth, rendered uninhabitable after the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. After a field-trip goes badly wrong, Verity is forced to redeem herself by participating in a dangerous mission, for which her expertise in invaluable.
Using a back door into an unstable alien transit system, Auger's faction has discovered something astonishing at the far end of a wormhole: mid twentieth-century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber. Is it a window into the past, a simulation, or something else entirely?
CENTURY RAIN is a jaw-droppingly good SF thriller, packed with pace, adventure, brilliant storytelling and with twists that will keep you guessing to the end.
Praise for Alastair Reynolds:
'The span here is mind-boggling, cosmos-spanning concepts, a breath-taking journey' Good Book Guide on Chasm City
'[A] wonderfully entertaining puzzle wrapped inside an adventure story' The Guardian on Eversion
'A fabulous and satisfying novel' SF Crowsnest on Revenger
'An excellent adventure that's sure to keep readers on their toes' Publishers Weekly on Revenger
'A fun, character focused bottle mystery that shifts settings like a chameleon walking across a rainbow carpet' The Quill to Live on Eversion
'Entertaining and thought-provoking' Locus on Revelation Space
'Pirates in space, full of peril and high-jinks . . . This is a novel that's elegantly plotted, full of surprises and, as first time round, rip-roaring fun' SFX on Revenger
'Reynolds is one of the modern masters of science fiction' Starburst
'This is a story to break hearts and make you turn pages. It's great stuff; pick it up, you'll want to know what happens next' SF&F Reviews on Century Rain
'Much of the fun of these books comes from the construction of a far, far-future space-opera . . . the mapping of Age of Sail tropes onto space travel is just the start . . . Nevertheless, at the centre of this baroque masquerade party resides a sober consideration of what it might mean to go off adventuring, what it might cost' Locus on Revenger
'Reynolds is a master singer of the Space Opera' The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his latest SF novel, Reynolds (Absolution Gap) creates yet another quirky, noirish vision of humanity's future. Three centuries from now, a technologically induced catastrophe, the Nanocaust, makes Earth uninhabitable. Two versions of humanity the Threshers, who live in a ring of habitats encircling Earth, and the Slashers, who inhabit the outer planets each blame the other for the disaster. Both groups share access to a system of artificial wormholes, one of which turns out to contain a perfect copy of Earth, sealed off from the rest of the galaxy, at its far end. The Threshers send archeologist Verity Auger to investigate. On this subtly different version of Earth, Wendell Floyd, a second-rate detective and jazz musician living in Paris in the year 1959, is looking into a very odd murder. Then Auger shows up claiming to be the victim's sister and pursued by lethal creatures who look like decaying children. While Reynolds beautifully details this alternate-universe Paris and handles the developing mystery with aplomb, his Thresher and Slasher cultures lack depth and his climax feels a bit jury-rigged. Still, fans of sophisticated hard SF should be pleased.
