Likewise, the strange and alien remains on Resurgam are as powerfully portrayed as the feelings of awe and wonder that are experienced by all who see them. Chasm City although only briefly included here (it gets a book of its own later) is brilliantly clear. The great hulking, empty, diseased vessel Infinity is brought to life vividly as is the character of Ilia who knows this mysterious ship better than anyone. There are immense riches and rewards to be found throughout Revelation Space. The tiny crew has one hope to save him and that too is wrapped around Sylveste. This has now spread to the captain who lies there, effectively dead, in a pool of spreading, stinking ooze. All they need is to be infected and this is an environment in which the ship’s very fabric is cursed by a plague.
The guns themselves defy human understanding – they are extraordinarily powerful and even susceptible to independent thought. Then there is weapons expert Ilia Volyova, one of the Triumvirate that controls an immensely vast space ship Nostalgia for Infinity, who hires Khouri as their gunnery officer. We also have Khouri, a female assassin who kills for the entertainment of Chasm City, who is hired by a mysterious, less or more than human figure, Mademoiselle, who has her own mission involving Sylveste. While Sylveste is the central figure of the novel, not least because everyone else is searching for him for some reason or other, he is not the only leading character. But Sylveste is destined to not lose sight of his quest. But the storm’s aftermath leaves him as a prisoner of a new regime, incarcerated in a cell, recounting his story and beliefs for some kind of corrupt biography being compiled by the new dictator’s daughter. Sylveste believes that he is close to discovering the reasons for the Amarantin’s end and this drives him as an obsession. Archaeologist Dan Sylveste is investigating the enigmatic remains of an extinct alien species, the Amarantin, on the recently colonised, politically unstable planet of Resurgam.
The opening pages are set on a dig as a storm approaches. Revelation Space has a beginning that works magic instantly. Once knowledge is gained, though, it cannot be unlearned – man’s curiosity could cost it dear. Reynolds’ first novel, Revelation Space, also marks the beginning of an original series, in which mankind is placed uneasily in an expanding universe, one that it is slowly starting to explore and comprehend, that contains remnants and clues to elusive alien species. Having enjoyed Alastair Reynold’s Blue Remembered Earth last year, it was just a matter of time before I returned to the beginning.
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