Slow Bullets (Alastair Reynolds)
Synopsis: Scur is a conscripted soldier at the end of a long war involving many
worlds when she is captured and tortured by a war criminal. As she is left for
dead she is rescued and for unknown reasons and put aboard a prison ship in stasis.
But things don't go as planned and Scur wakes up aboard a dying ship, with other prisoners and crew waking up at the same time, all of them confused.
Review: I was disappointed with this book. I really wanted it to be more than it
was. I liked the title; I even had a whole theory about what the plot of the
book would be before I had read it, based on that title alone. Sadly I was
disappointed.
Whats wrong with the book? Its only 190 pages, in paperback, and that is not
long. It would have greatly benefited from a greater exposition of details,
characters, and plot. I would have liked to see the characters rebuild their
society, or forge something great, but all the story really gives is the vaguest
gloss over this. It feels like Reynolds wrote it in a couple of weeks, just to
get something to a publisher. It is supremely mediocre, but it could have been so
much better with a bit more time and attention.
The story is entirely told from a first person narrative, and is quite linear in
its approach. The end was a little to idealistic for my taste as well. The one
thing I really liked was the concept of the Slow Bullets, a repository of personal data and memory. I wish that the book had taken the time to give a more thorough explanation of the concept.
2 and a half stars. Next up is What the Dickens by Gregory Maguire. This one has been waiting on my shelf for a long time, and I'm trying to get to some of those books.