Space Opera Fans discussion

The November 2018 THEMED Pick is Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds. The theme is Mysterious Object. Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

Official description:
2057. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclearpowered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. But when Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, inexplicably leaves its natural orbit and heads out of the solar system at high speed, Bella is ordered to shadow it for the few vital days before it falls forever out of reach.

In accepting this mission she sets her ship and her crew on a collision course with destiny-for Janus has many surprises in store, and not all of them are welcome...

I read about 75% of this book back in 2015. The first half of the book held my interest, but it reached a point where I didn’t care about the characters and eventually I gave up.

This shouldn’t discourage you from reading it. Post comments about how much you enjoyed it to try to convince me to finish it!

Excellent. I just bought this a couple weeks ago, too. (Which is not a super-impressive coincidence since I’ve purchased about 30 books since the end of August.🤑)

To me all of his non Revelation Space books pale in comparison to those.

I loved Pushing Ice. Just re-read it a couple months ago. The significance of “This is Bella Lind and you’re watching CNN” killed me. (Hope I quoted it correctly.)

Just finished Pushing Ice. I love most books by Alastair Reynolds and this is no exception. Great job on showing how little we know and can guess about aliens.

This is the only Alastair Reynolds novel I have yet to read, and I have it on order. As soon as it comes in next week I will dive in. Reynolds is my favorite sci-fi author, and I'm a little surprised at myself for not having read this yet.

I’ve read this book twice, it was the first Reynolds book I read and remains one of my favourites.

It’s not as good as most of the Revelation Space series, and not even close to House of Suns, but still beats most modern sci-fi hands down.

...*beats* most modern sci-fi...

Thoroughly enjoyed it. Slightly more so than House of Suns.

Did anyone else pause at $12 for a 2007 ebook? Even at 600pp, that's pretty steep. At least for me.

Penguin price gouges. When I bought it a few years ago it was under $7. Is Penguin the publisher that decided to not carry paperbacks any more, just hardbacks and ebooks priced as if the books weren’t available in paperback?

Laz wrote: "Did anyone else pause at $12 for a 2007 ebook? Even at 600pp, that's pretty steep. At least for me."

Yes. Especially since Reynolds doesn’t get much of that. So I bought mine used on abebooks.com for $3.99/free shipping. Looks brand new.

I was disappointed with this book. It felt like Reynolds was more interested in what he can do with writing and science than coming up with a cohesive, engaging story. It's not bad, just not what I was hoping for.