Century Rain - Alastair Reynolds

Verity Auger is an Archaeologist who spend her time searching Paris for tokens from the past. The Earth has been desolated after humans tried to clean up the atmosphere using nanotechnology. It all went horribly wrong and the nano's took over. The Earth is covered in a sheet of ice and to come in contact with the nano's can mean death. Verity almost kills her team in one of her searches and is afterwards given a choice. Face a tribunal or head through a portal to Earth2. On Earth2 it is 1959 although it is much like the 1930's of Earth1. There was no WWII and as a result technology isn't where it should be and fascism is once again on the rise. Verity must go there to collect the belongings of murdered agent, Susan White.

I used to love Space Opera novels and Reynolds was one of my favourites. Like the last one I read I found that whilst I liked it I was also a little bored by it and the book didn't push on fast enough. In this case there was just far too much going on. There was a war between two species of humans, conspiracies, an Earth2 human investigating Susan White's murder and then Verity's own investigation. It was just too much with long boring periods in the middle and a rush at the end. In all honesty the rush at the end was the best part.

There were still parts of it I enjoyed. I liked the Paris setting with it's 1930's feel. Every so often you would get a reminder that it was supposed to be 1959. When Verity finally arrived on Earth 2 and the action started I enjoyed that too. I think maybe because then the pace picked up and the story became interesting.

In any case I think I will leave off Reynolds for a while. This was the last of his books in my tbr pile. I have a few Peter F. Hamilton's there. So I will see how I feel about those before I leave off the Space Opera novels all together. It's definitely not the sci fi itself though as I have been enjoying that over the last year.

I read this for the sci fi challenge hosted by Ellie of Curiousity Killed The Bookworm. The book was supposed to be Fahrenheit 451 but as I have read it before I picked out one from my tbr pile. Almost wish I had read it again. Anyways, you can read what others read here.