- finalistii 2012 Nebula Award.

- Alastair Reynolds a terminat de scris On the Steel Breeze, continuarea lui Blue Remembered Earth.

- lista celor mai noi aparitii Tor/Forge.

- un fragment din River of Stars, cea mai noua carte scrisa de Guy Gavriel Kay.

‘Pushing Ice’ follows the story of the crew of Rockhopper, a mining vessel which normally captures and steers back comets for use by Earth. However, in the middle of one operation, it is discovered that one of the moons of Saturn, Janus, is really some kind of alien satellite, which is hot footing it out of the solar system towards Spica.

After some debate, Rockhopper sets off after Janus, and we travel with them for the next hundred years or so. The main protagonists through the story are Bella Lind, who is the Captain of the vessel at the start of the story, and Svetlana Barseghian, Chief Engineer.

I do admire the fact that Alastair Reynolds has made the two main characters female, and he does discuss the difficulties faced by women in charge of a technical position. However, I did find that I struggled a little bit with the personalities of all the characters. They are so driven and ambitious, and although they may have faults, they didn’t seem to really have the smaller weaknesses which make people human. They never seemed to slack off, or have chocolate cravings, or anything which would give them a degree of frivolity or light-heartedness. Don’t get me wrong – this is a serious book, and I’m not expecting a barrel of laughs, but it did make them feel a bit mechanical to me.

The description of this book in one of the citations as a ‘Space Opera’ fits perfectly. There is a lot of political intrigue, changes of fortune, and some tragedy. The structure is also more like this than your typical Beginning-Middle-End book. ‘Pushing Ice’ is more like ‘Beginning-Middle-Middle-Middle-Middle-’

I’ve no doubt that it would make a really compelling TV series, and I was never bored or tempted to stop reading, but I did wonder if perhaps it could have been split into two of three much shorter, punchier books.

That said, ‘Pushing Ice’ is an impressive piece of writing, and it does have some very convincing and engaging world creation. The characters are gritty and strong, and quite believable.

My rating: 3.5 stars.

The first few chapters introduce you to the two main characters, Verity Auger and Wendell Floyd, and the respective worlds that they live in. It didn’t make much sense to me to start with, but I’m glad I stuck with it because after a few chapters you start to see the links between the ‘Paris’ in both worlds.

The Paris in Auger’s world is way in the future after Earth has already been destroyed by a build up of weather control machines designed to reverse global warming, but end up destroying the earth in an event called the Nanocaust. Auger is an archaeologist exploring the ruins of Paris for any remaining artefacts, and when a girl she is working with dies in her care, she is offered the chance to get out of the tribunal and inevitable punishment and carry out a mission. She is initially given no real information about this mission, but doesn’t really have much choice but to accept, knowing the alternative.

The mission is to Floyd’s version of Paris, which is 300 years back in 1959, and turns out to be a copy of Earth made before the Nanocaust wiped out all traces of life on Earth. E2 (as it is known) was frozen in time until 23 years prior, when suddenly it came back to life again.

After Auger has completed the mission she is sent to E2 to complete (with many hiccups and a LOT of help from Floyd), she and Floyd end up on a mission to save E2 from complete destruction by the Slashers. The Slashers believe that they should embrace all new technology, whereas the Threshers (to which Auger belongs) believe that they should never embrace any technology which could lead to a repetition of the Nanocaust. These two sides are now at war with each other in a battle to keep control of the Earth.

There are many nail biting moments along their journey, including many times when I absolutely couldn’t stop reading because I had to know what happened next. I won’t say too much in case you want to read the book, but I will say that I didn’t expect the book to end up quite how it did, although the way that it ended was brilliant.

It’s hard to pick my favourite part of the book, but I do have a favourite quote which jumped out at me as soon as I read it. Auger (a Thresher) is reflecting on the help that she has had from Cassandra (a Slasher), and the feelings that she had towards her from the start of the story.

The simple fact was that she no longer hated them as a matter of principle. It was also a source of shameful amazement that she could ever have wasted so much energy on groundless prejudice, when acceptance and tolerance would have been the easier, even the lazier, course.

Pretty meaningful, it definitely stuck in my head, and I think it’s something that we could all take to heart at times.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in sci-fi novels, but also to anyone who likes a good nail-biter with plenty of action and a bit of romance thrown in. It’s definitely changed my mind about reading sci-fi novels in the future.