Eversion

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I really enjoyed the story and the differing periods but the ending fell a little flat for me overall. This story is, at its core, a mystery — Silas attempting to unravel the anomalies in his experience of reality and the unknown artifact while trying to keep his crew and friends alive. While this adventure moves ahead across multiple times and locations, the confrontations between Coade, Ramos, Cossile, and the others probe more deeply into questions of empathy and what it means to be human. Then he turned directly to SFF as an amazing medium for re-envisioning the mind and the worlds it creates.

But when disaster strikes the Demeter, the action starts over again, this time on the coast of Patagonia around the mid-19th century. The attempt to work out the mathematics of this massive shape, and hence the ability to navigate its intricacies, is the obsession of the young mathematician, Raymond Dupin. Within the fissure rears a massive stone construction, provenance unknown, that reportedly contains something of immense value. I understand the weirdness of the beginning now but it is difficult to know how the author could have made it better given the overall plot. I had the worst time with the first book I ever read by him (the title of which I can’t even remember anymore, it was that lackluster) so ever since then I’ve stayed far away.When disaster strikes, the Demeter meets the same fate as others ships that have attempted this doomed quest.

He begins to realize that there is something horribly wrong with these missions, wondering why only he can remember memories and information that makes no sense.

It gradually builds up tension, and is definitely messing with your mind - you won't be able to discern reality from imagination until almost at the end. The eversions that most intrigue Reynolds are the paradoxes and uncertainties of authorial identity, agency, and memory, and the choices made, ignored, and/or denied in constructing a narrative. If there are any core concepts more central to the genre of science fiction than mind-bending ideas, awe-inspiring vistas, and grand adventure, I don’t know what they are. Alastair Reynolds has already proved himself a master of intelligent space opera such as Shadow Captain - with Eversion he enters more exotic territory, giving us an SF novel where things are much more weird and wonderful, and he succeeds equally well here. I was definitely invested in them and how they would fare in the challenges that come up throughout the story.