New Review: Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships
August 18, 2003 (7:36 PM) ( link )

ADDED a review of Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships. Mediocre novel, though I expected much better.

I'm reading a novel that looks like it will be one of the best I've read all year: Alastair Reynolds's Chasm City. So far it reads like Iain M. Banks, but better; like Banks, Reynolds has an eye for the cool detail or the nifty backstory without losing a sure touch with his narrative voice. And the plotting isn't bad either; already there are some mysterious gaps and unusual parallel storylines that beg to be explained. Even better, the novel is something like 600 pages long, and Reynolds has written two other novels along the same lines: Revelation Space and Redemption Ark. Whoever's in charge of the cover and book design should be given an award too: what actually first attracted me to these books was their cool cover paintings; those covers drove me to look up reviews, which drove me to read his books.