From the Bookshelf of Book Lust Reading Guild…

Revenger (Revenger #1)

Alastair Reynolds

Start date: September 1, 2019

Finish date: September 30, 2019

Discussion: BOTM Lengthy Discussion Space

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 9 topics — 24 comments total

BOTM Lengthy Discussion Space

October 2018 - Frankenstein: Prodigal Son
By Sarah · 5 posts · 28 views

last updated Nov 01, 2018 08:22AM

September 2018 - Whose Body
By Sarah · 1 post · 10 views

last updated Oct 10, 2018 08:51AM

What Members Thought

Oct 29, 2019 tiph rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook, 2019

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book was so strange!! I waffled at how many stars to give it. I'm thinking 3.75 stars?

The story reached such interesting places at times, and other times felt disjointed and uninteresting. There was imaginative space worlds and tech, and then juvenile weirdness like everyone calling oxygenated air "lungstuff" instead of, I dunno, air, or oxygen, or calling technology they don't understand "ghostie stuff." A lot of the slang was like that, though, it was easy to translate, but no clear way w This book was so strange!! I waffled at how many stars to give it. I'm thinking 3.75 stars?

The story reached such interesting places at times, and other times felt disjointed and uninteresting. There was imaginative space worlds and tech, and then juvenile weirdness like everyone calling oxygenated air "lungstuff" instead of, I dunno, air, or oxygen, or calling technology they don't understand "ghostie stuff." A lot of the slang was like that, though, it was easy to translate, but no clear way why it was renamed in the first place, and why only those things and not others.

Fura's progression was compelling, seeing her go from scared to scary was a special and slightly uncomfortable joy. The concept of the Occupations and centuries of humankind in a kind of perpetual cycle of rising and falling also really caught my fancy, and I'd love to know about about all of that, and technologies that were lost. I was most captured by the Baubles, which I could have read a whole book on - why they exist, how they work, why there's so many, what they used to be, the phenomenon that makes them closed most of the time and open for short times....
There was such a fascinating interconnection between tech and things that felt almost supernatural. The communication between the bones, coming through whatever powers of ancient alien skulls, or even the auguries. None of it was explained in detail, since this was Fura's story, not a living history of the 13th occupation. But I felt that the book barely scratched the surface of, well, everything.

There were one or two things I liked a little less: namely the tendency for "villain monologues." Everyone was always overexplaining everything, even to people who it made remotely zero sense to get in on the info loop. Sometimes it made things repetitive, since we got Fura's inner monologue/narration, her explaining it out loud, then reexplaining it later when the plan finally came to fruition. It wasn't super frequent so as to be completely unbearable, but I felt the frustrated "Oh my god shut up why would you even be saying this instead of just doing the thing" wayyyy more than once. The other thing was that some of the "surprising reveals" were dragged on for way too long to be surprising, or were handled in such a way to make it feel anti-climactic.

All in all though, I found the journey to be... well, creepy, stressful, and very compelling. Expansive and imaginative sci-fi (especially in space!) always catches my attention, and this one did a good job of holding it and making me want more. ...more

Like · see review