InSlow Bullets , the late novel from Alastair Reynolds , a soldier awakens on a captive ship far out in space , unsure of where she ’s drop dead or why she ’s there . As she and her fellow passengers descend to condition with their predicament , they must overcome their own pasts .
Reynolds has written a number of hefty blank space opera tome since his launching novel , Revelation Space in 2000 , but Slow Bullets clocks in at a slim 200 pages . It feels like it ’s a Holy Writ ripped out of the 1960s , with a fast - pace plot with flock of scientific discipline and a good dose of societal retrospection .
The novel opens with Scur being captured and tortured at the hands of a notorious warfare criminal , Orvin , right after the terminal of a major , interstellar war . He interject her with a slow slug , an implant design to capture one ’s yesteryear , their record , pictures , everything . She go past out after she cuts it out of her leg , and when she wake up , she ’s far , far from domicile .
The prison ship she ’s on is identify the Caprice , and along with Prad , one of the ship ’s technician , they try and tack together together what materialise . The interstellar navigational meshwork is down , and they do n’t recognize the major planet they ’re orbit . More worrisome , the ship has been seriously damaged , and it ’s losing computer memory : their records and systems are becoming corrupted . Learning more about their site , it ’s unclouded that they ’re not where they require to be , and that the events that have transpired are unknown than they could have imagine .
This is a unusual , wonderful little book . It ’s a quick read , and a bit light on some details , but there ’s a great deal packed into it . Coming out of the war , the ship is filled with camarilla of survivors : ex - Soldiers , civilians , gang members and prisoners , each distrustful of the other . They can survive on the ship for a longer period of time with enough precaution , but they risk recede something crucial : data from the ship ’s computing machine .
They start to replicate it down on every useable insipid airfoil , etching information into the walls , and Reynolds has some pointed thing to say about how we gestate the past around with us . The implant that every soldier carries are of import , and together with , they help justify what each soldier had gone through . At the same time , Scur is forced to confront her Orvin and what he did to her .
Slow Bullets is a cracking introduction to Reynolds and his fantastic trunk of workplace , written with a optical maser centering that makes the book unacceptable to put down , even if there were point in time where I wanted a bit more setting . in the end , Slow Bullets is a clever , fast novel that ’s well deserving picking up , about how we extend the past tense with us , and how we move on from a traumatic past .
ho-hum Bullets is out from Tachyon Publications on June 9th .
Alastair Reynoldsbook reviewSci - Fi
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