Oh I do enjoy taking a trip around Paul McAuley's future solar system, chasing secrets and technological maguffins and odd sub-cultures in odder places, pursued by assassins and cultists and the past in a quest for the future. Our hero is Hari, marooned after his ship is boarded and his family is killed or captured. He escapes with the head of a scientist locked full of knowledge, and lots of people are after it while Hari himself wants to find what, if anything is left of his family and gain some measure of revenge.

McAuley's writing is crisp and cool and his portrait of the solar system, inhabited but moribund after the fall of an Empire and the rise of millennial cults, with is asteroid garden full of vacuum flowers and moons and habitats and a thawing Earth is fascinating, while Hari's questturns out to be less about revenge and more about getting free of the past. ( )

I literally could not remember that I had finished it. I would have given it a 3, but clearly it left no actual impression on me. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2254867.html

Second of the BSFA nominees for me; I loved the way it started, with an asteroid escape similar to that of Adam Roberts' Jack Glass last year (though with less sex and violence); it's apparently the fourth of a series, but I didn't feel I'd lost out by missing the first three. Our protagonist, having escaped the destruction of his family, preserving the severed head of a scientist with various secrets preserved in its brain, treks across the outer solar system, finding allies, betrayal, lost relatives, and precious secrets. It's an excellent hard sf / space opera tale - we don't get so many of those these days - and each section of the book is named after an sf classic of the past - Childhood's End, "Marooned off Vesta", The Caves of Steel, Pirates of the Asteroids, "The Cold Equations" and Downward to the Earth. I'd have liked perhaps a little more insight into our central character, but it is a front-runner for my ballot (two down, three to go). ( )

This novel is set in the far future and follows three previous novels, The Quiet War, Gardens of the Sun, In the Mouth of the Whale, and a raft of short stories, so some background is needed.

The Quiet War in tbe 23rd century decided that that the anarchic 'Outers' would lead the early phase of the colonisation of the Solar System, instead of the warring, powerful Families of Old Earth. The legendary gene wizard Avernus developed 'vacuum gardens' that could transform rocks in space into not just useful resources but also objects of beauty.

The Outers later fell under the rule of the True, who pursued a fanatical devotion to 'human perfection', and bred lesser humans as slaves. The fall of the True began with their attempt to make contact with an alien entity, reputedly living in Cthuga, Fomalhaut's gas giant. At this time occurred the 'Bright Moment', which everyone alive experienced, of a vision of a man riding a bike. While this 'event' was real, no one can explain it.

This is then not a clean and tidy vision of the future. It feels more like the medieval past, but is certainly not steam punk. Eccentricity thrives. Another important feature are the glorious descriptions of space scapes, a chaotic mix of old and new, plain and bizarre. Every time the action slows, the wonder of the environment takes over.

In contrast to the big events in the earlier novels, this one revolves around one person, Hari (a famous name in SF). Hari is alone on an asteroid. His family's ship has been hijacked. His family could all be dead. All he has is a semi-intelligent space suit and a deep desire for revenge. In his search for revenge he learns is that all is not as it appears. This is a masterful novel which takes the reader along with Hari as he tries to right wrongs. In this universe though there is no simple division between good and evil.

The weakness of this series is that it that it breaks too many rules. There are no heroes. Good does not always win. Life is not always an upward curve. The links between the novels do not follow an obvious narrative chain. The only constant pleasure are the amazing space scapes, which never cease to delight and amaze. ( )