Pushing Ice (Reynolds), Interim Comment

[mindstalk]

Good god, everyone's insane. Well, not everyone. But both Svetlana and Bella need to be slapped silly. Or slapped sensible. And the rest of the crew, for not keeping Svetlana on a democratic leash.

Hope some readers knows what I'm talking about... I just hit the Buenos Aires passage.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I loved that book, but dear gods both Svetlana and Bella seriously messed up. I'm pleased that in House of Suns (and to an only slightly lesser extent, in Century Rain, the characters are not quite so dysfunctional.

OTOH, the setting of Pushing Ice (after the end of the book), would be one of the coolest I've seen for an SF RPG.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Yay! Not just me, thanks.
Read CR, don't remember any people, just the world setting. Haven't read House yet.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Odd, CR is the only one of Reynolds' novels where I found the setting considerably less interesting than the characters. I think HoS is his best yet (although Chasm City is still wonderful - I love how it deals with the exact same issues as Banks' Use of Weapons, except that the protagonist's attempts at redemption are not nearly so utterly doomed in Chasm City.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Little of the New Space Opera seems to leave much in the way of characters with me, though that might be a function of lack of re-reading or seriesness. (Bujold and Pratchett stick with me quite well, but those characters get lots of exposure... OTOH, Small Gods and Good Omens make decent impacts.) I know there were characters in Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise but um... The Rev Space bunch have bigger impact, especially the ones in and around Nostalgia For Infinity, Volvova and Sylveste, but also Clavain and other Conjoiners. Tanner... somewhat. Never did re-read Chasm, though.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

I found Pushing Ice the least interesting of his novels that I've read. But then, I like a lot of ideas and extrapolations in my SF, and am less enamoured of character. Conjoiners, Outsiders, Chasm City, all cool ideas. As were the pigmen, whatever they're called.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

for not keeping Svetlana on a democratic leash.

SF is not the genre you want to read if you like leaders on democratic leashes.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Sure as hell wasn't this book. The closest thing they had to an election was a tribal show of who had the most support. Otherwise it was swapping autocracy back and forth in a community of up to five hundred people. There's something to be said for avoiding overhead, and they inherited the autocracy of captaincy, but when you're locking people up for years there's something to be said for "hey, direct democracy actually works that this scale". But no, it was all "Svetlana, can be maybe give her a pack of cigarettes a year?" and never "Um, guys, are we really on board with this?"

I note that Reynolds is Welsh and not at all American so we can't take the blame on this one.