Book Review - Century Rain (Alastair Reynolds)

Century Rain is a futuristic sci-fi thriller from Alastair Reynolds. It opens in the 23^rd century, where humanity has divided into two factions – the machine-augmented Slashers and the more conservative Threshers – and the Earth has been deserted in the wake of a machine-led catastrophe. War between Slashers and Threshers is looming, especially over who gets to possess the Earth, which has been overtaken by machines. An archeologist named Verity Auger is approached by the Securities Board of the Threshers (aka, the secret service) to investigate a secret phenomenon; an immense metallic sphere capable of housing a planet. Inside is a replica of the Earth set during an alternate 1950s. Auger is called on to retreive some top secret documents from Paris, while evading the hostile Slasher forces that have already penetrated the planet.

One thing you can say for Alastair Reynolds is that he knows how to convey a sense of scale. Like his other works, this book spans vast swathes of space, sometimes even bending the laws of reality to give his universe an even greater scope. Even then, this feels like only one portion of a much bigger story. We keep getting hints of other events, like the past wars between Slashers and Threshers, and the Nanocaust which destroyed the Earth. The biggest event is the creation of the spheres, which we're kept in the dark about. We never find out who created them, or “how” or “why” for that matter. While it can feel like a bit of cheat to string the reader along for 500 pages with no clear answer, I like how Reynolds keeps certain things back, making his universe feel so much bigger. He's tackled similar themes in other works like Pushing Ice, where another super-advanced civilisation creates an enormous structure capable of containing a planet. I imagine you'd have to read all his novels to really understand it, given how he likes to loosely thread them together.

The alternate Earth is a different addition to his other books. This is the first time I've read Reynolds trying to write a “historical” piece. The concept of averting WWII has been around a long time, but Reynolds handles it in a fascinating way here. Here the War hasn't been averted, but greatly shortened, lasting a few months as the Nazis failed to take France due to unseasonally heavy rain (caused by the artificial climate of the sphere). Without the arms race that followed, the human race didn't progress technologically and is still stuck in a 1930s type world without television, computers, and most crucially, spacefaring technology that would reveal the truth about their world. Technology is not the only change though; because the Nazis never got as far as the Final Solution, there was no widespread condemnation of Fascism and global movement towards civil rights. The alternate France is clearly moving down the Fascist route again, while our protagonist (an American PI named Wendell Floyd) can only helplessly watch.

While Reynolds loves to play around with his universe and invent all sorts of weirdness, I didn't think his characterisation was that strong. It's not that he doesn't try; we spend a lot of time with Auger and Floyd, finding out about their pasts, their motivations, and their relations with the other characters. Reynolds does a lot to make these people three-dimensional and interesting, but for some reason, I didn't feel as invested in them as I should have. I suppose the hyperfuturistic setting is part of the problem. Reynolds's universe is certainly alien, but it's so alien that I sometimes struggle to connect with the people in it. The constant presence of technology, which has become almost omnipotent in its development, also makes the universe feel a bit too dettached from ours, as technologically-driven as our world is.

The scenes in alternate Paris were the best for me, as here the characters felt strongest. The relatability of the setting may have helped here. Floyd's situation was one that I think almost everyone can relate to. He has a choice between continuing his life in France with its – limited – security, or he can go to America with his one-time flame, Greta, and risk starting a new life there. Between a corrupt society, precarious job and unfulfilled ambitions, this is certainly not easy reading, but it's still the part of the book I feel works the best. I thought the slow-burning romance between Auger and Floyd was decently handled. I'm glad Reynolds didn't make it too saccharine, or go the other extreme and have them clash so much that their feelings didn't feel plausible. That said, I didn't think their relationship was remarkable – it didn't stay with me long after finishing the book – but it was enough to fill up the middle portion of the story.

Something else I feel this story could have needed was a bit more humour. Reynolds doesn't often try for humour, and when he does it's usually characters quipping in life-or-death situations, a style I don't really care for. Most of the time, his work comes off as po-faced and too serious, which can make be hard to engage with sometimes.

The technobabble can also be overbearing sometimes. Reynolds spends a lot of time discussing wormholes, nanotechnology, secret communications, and God knows what else. It's just about legible if you pay attention, which can be difficult when the plot slows down. Be warned, the plot slows a lot in this book, especially near the beginning and the end. The final section consists of our heroes travelling through space, trying to stop a superweapon being deployed on Floyd's Earth. It lasts about a hundred pages but I feel it could have been pared down a bit. This is another tactic Reynolds uses to show how enormous the universe is, by having his characters take ages to get from A to B, which is understandable if you want to convey realism. But did it really have to be done this much? By this point, I was just trying to finish the book as quickly as possible.

One last thing I want to touch on are the villains. The most predominant are those weird kids on Floyd's Earth, who in reality are genetically-modified soldiers which have stuck around a bit longer than their sell-by date, and are now starting to malfunction in psychotic ways. I love to see this sort of genre-bending, and Reynolds uses it to great effect here. The children behave like ghouls from European folklore, yet also serve as a warning about the limits of technology – the merging of Old and New World symbols is definitely one of my favourite things about this book.

However, these are only grunts. The real villains, the ones pulling all the strings are far, far less interesting. In fact, we only meet one of them briefly, and for the rest of the story, all we see of them are the tail-lights of their receding spaceship. Hardly what you'd call memorable.

With all that said, I'd still reccommend Century Rain for any sci-fi fans out there. Its eye for the grandiose and spectacular may feel alienating, especially when it comes to making the story feel more personal, but it's still well worth checking out.