Eversion

The author of Inhibitor Phase (2019) and Permafrost (2017), among many other fine SF novels, just might have outdone himself here. His new novel begins on a sailing ship in the nineteenth century. The vessel crashes, and the ship's doctor, Silas Coade, is killed. In the twentieth century, an airship is exploring in the Antarctic; disaster strikes, killing the ship's doctor, Silas Coade. Centuries from now, a spaceship exploring an alien structure encounters trouble; the ship's doctor, Silas Coade, perishes. Different times and places, linked, apparently, by one man. And if you think that's a difficult concept to wrap your head around, wait until you see what else Reynolds has in store in this utterly brilliant exploration of life, death, and consciousness. There are so many moments when we think: "I can't believe he just did that"--so many moments that make us pause to digest some new piece of information that changes everything that came before it. Is this Reynolds' best book? Perhaps, but that's difficult to say, because he's such a talented writer. It's his most ambitious, certainly, and at the very least, one of his best. Required reading for SF fans.

Much of the fun in this vigorous space opera from Reynolds (Terminal World) comes from figuring out the tricks of the twisty plot. Narrator Silas Coade, an anxious young assistant surgeon, starts the novel on a little sloop sailing up the coast of Norway in the 1800s, searching for a fissure in the cliffs said to contain a mysterious "Edifice." Along the way, Coade dies. But then the same narrator is on a steamship a century later looking for a fissure off the coast of South America. After another death, he's on a dirigible entering the Hollow Earth through a crater in Antarctica. As Coade struggles with overlapping memories of past expeditions, he slowly realizes that the stories he's telling obscure the real crisis: an alien space probe has crashed into a subterranean ocean and has captured the human members of a team trying to explore that ocean. The team will all die unless Coade can face a startling truth about himself. Reynolds packs plenty of emotion into this mind-bending plot as Coade struggles to do the right/human thing. The result is an excellent adventure that's sure to keep readers on their toes. Agent: Robert Kirby, United Agents. (Aug.)