Mare Somniorum

Reynolds dazzled me with how good Chasm City was, and I was recommended “Pushing Ice” as “something I might like” from an employee at the bookstore I frequent.  It was…  interesting.

Let me put it like this… Have you read “Rendezvous with Rama”?  How about not just the first one, but the following trilogy?  Did you ever read them and think “I’d like to read this again, but written by a different author?”  No?  Well, neither have I.  And if you did, well, uhm, okay.

As much as I wanted to like “Pushing Ice” it just falls a bit short.  The interpersonal matters are decent, but Reynolds strength when it comes to people is to make them come alive through the worlds he dreams up. When you essentially try to take on a previous classic written by Clarke you will have your work cut out for you.  Clarke, at least for me, was never about the science, nor the fiction.  He wrote about us, the people and our relation to his science and his fiction.  And, sadly, Reynolds doesn’t come close to pulling that off.

There was a reason we got four books about Rama (well, six if you want to admit the last two into the fold).  Thing is, stories about groups of people moving through alien worlds meeting all sorts of weird things takes, well, space.  Add to this the preamble, the people and a wrapper and it gets tricky to frame it into a single volume, even by todays standards.  And “Pushing Ice” doesn’t quite pass 600 pages.  If your goal was to just the first (and in my opinion best by far) work, you should have skipped the last half of the book and concentrated on the earlier matters.  If the goal was to rewrite the four famous volumes of Rama in a single 600-page paperback, I’m not sure if it’s hybris or, well, something else.

Anyway, the first third of the book is quite good.  The pacing hits and that allows characters to work the way Reynolds does best.  It’s tight and scripted to the bone which is nice.  The second half is mostly okay, but it felt to me as if Reynolds just doesn’t do human interaction well unless it’s precipitated by fairly strong emotions.  This, combined with the content density of the book, leaves pretty much nothing but people displayed as stubborn and fixed.  The few acts we see that are aimed to be balanced almost feel like they’re cut from a different work.

The third part?  Well, meh.  I will admit to loving the character Chromis and her influence in the work.  But, well, it saddens me that looking back on the book I would have considered dropping it if she wasn’t present in the last section of the work.  Throughout “Pushing Ice” she’s the only character that really leaves you guessing, the only one that really brings a nod and a smile to your face — at least if you’re me.

Oh, and honestly, conversations down the line of “I’m sorry things went how they did, but considering you’re you and I’m me, I don’t see how else they could have gone” is going to fall very flat unless your character work is extremely stellar (hello Neuropath).  Following it up with an unemotional agreement from the other party isn’t helping.  There were times when I felt like throwing the book across the room in the hope that it might make a few of the characters show some semblance of reflection — and thus make the book at least somewhat interesting to read.

It’s a safe conclusion to guess that I’ve read better books recently.  What’s more worrysome is that “Chasm City” is looking more and more like a one-off thing.  “Pushing Ice” isn’t a horrid book, I’ve read worse.  But if you want to read a book about the “first encounter with a big space thingy”, read “Rendezvous with Rama”.  And if you want “meeting many aliens in a weird realm”, read the rest of the Rama saga.   I didn’t particularly like Rama II to IV, but it is a more rewarding read than “Pushing Ice”.