Eversion - Alastair Reynolds

A few chapters into Eversion and I had to double check that I hadn't downloaded the wrong book. At first I assumed that the ship that Dr Silas Coade is on would turn out to be the usual kind of ship you find in Alastair Reynolds books: a spaceship. The old-fashioned accoutrements and surgical implements didn't necessarily suggest anything different; after all, the Revenger series plays with piracy in a similar steampunk space adventure level. But no, the longer you read, the more it does seem like Reynolds has turned his hand - quite successfully - to historical fiction. All however is surely not what it seems...

For a while however, the journey remains on the high seas. Silas Coade is an assistant surgeon aboard a fifth rate schooner, The Demeter, a private enterprise travelling into the frozen north in search of a mysterious Edifice. A previous expedition, the Europa, has discovered the construction that is reportedly to be found in a lagoon concealed behind a fissure in a huge cliff face. What it is exactly is shrouded in mystery, but the information relayed back has led a Russian, Topolsky, to organise an exploratory expedition. The small crew has been hand-picked for specific skills to navigate the dangerous approach and explore the strange construction, if it really exists at all. 

It's not unknown for Reynolds to stray outside the SF genre before, or at least appear to in books like Century Rain, even if it inevitably ends up with a SF twist. There are enough strange unexplained goings-on and troubled visions in Dr Coade's nightmares to suggest that there's perhaps more than meets the eye on the Demeter's journey north. There is still a lot to enjoy along the way in the early-to-mid pages of the book - the bulk of it really - as Reynolds' writing is just marvellous, like he is a natural for this kind of thing. The characters, the dialogue and the relationships between them are fascinating and intriguing, clearly suggesting that there is trouble ahead.

It's not all that surprising that Reynolds can work in historical fiction as well as science fiction. A ship is a ship, whether it's a fifth rate schooner heading north of Bergen (or is it a steamship heading south of Patagonia?) or whether it's travelling into unknown outreaches of space; the crew face the same dangers and onboard tensions. As Coade begins to show signs of a troubled mind, even beyond the mere sea sickness he is afflicted with, we begin to detect an element of something being blocked out, whether it's in the romance he is writing or in the morphine self-medication he is administering. There is an underlying fear of the Stone Edifice that they are approaching that surfaces in the book that he is having difficulty finishing and in the vivid drug-fuelled nightmares. His grip on reality seems uncertain.

It should come as no surprise then that a writer specialising in SF and space opera is also operating on several levels of 'reality' here. As they approach the Edifice, the wrongness of the picture becomes more and more apparent, even as the nature of the situation remains for a long time tantalisingly out of reach. It's nothing particularly original maybe, combining Philip K Dick - who was the master of this kind of delusion of breaking through surface realities in Ubik, A Maze of Death and Time Out of Joint - with something of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.

I don't think any of this constitutes a spoiler, as if you've read any of those books and are familiar with Alastair Reynolds, then the general direction of travel of Eversion will be evident to the reader - just not the why or where it is going to end up. Suffice to say that Reynolds puts his own spin on it and addresses or raises some interesting human, moral and philosophical questions, but just as importantly he delivers a thrilling SF adventure.

Reading notes: Eversion by Alastair Reynolds is published by Gollancz on the 26th May 2022. Thanks to NetGalley and the published for the advance proof copy.