If you’ve read any of masterful storyteller Alastair Reynolds, you will be well acquainted with what a superbly good writer he is.
In all of his books, which normally takes place on emotionally rich and expansive science fiction narrative landscapes, he gives characters that pop, stories that are epic and intimate all at once, and stories that are so immersively captivating that putting them down for a break is pretty much non-negotiable.
It’s clearly evident in brilliantly-wrought novels like Revenger, which I described as “space opera as it ought to be” and his latest gripping story, Eversion, which, interestingly enough, starts its compelling life on a 19th century fifth-rate sloop on its way north of Bergen to find a treasure so fantastical that many of the central characters, and one in particular, is willing to give their lives to secure it.
That’s more a state of mind than an intention because all the man behind the expedition, a Russian named Topolsky, can see is fame and dollar signs and being dead would rather put a spanner in those hyperbolic future works.
Suffice to say, he and his twenty-year-old mathematician employee Raymond Dupin, who is manically obsessed to the point of bodily exhaustion and ruin of figuring out the secrets of the Edifice, the stunning artefact of which they are in search, want to be alive to enjoy the fruits of their labour which could give them the greatest discovery of the age of discovery.
“‘Is that settled, Captain?’ I asked. ‘We are really going through that fissure?’
‘The matter will be decided when we have light,’ Van Vught answered. ‘And if the passage is navigable – if I judge it so – then navigate it we shall.’
I could not explain why an unaccountable dread had begun to fill me at the idea of threading that passage. But fill me it had.” (P. 33)
It all looks to be going swimmingly well until Eversion delivers up the first of its beguiling twists and turns which sees disaster strike and things go well and truly south, with the story resetting itself to a steamship on the way to Patagonia, with the same crew onboard including protagonist Dr. Silas Coade, the ship’s medical hire, and lead protagonist, who has his hands busy with an outer space novel he’s writing (which the ship’s crew including crewman Mortlock are enjoying enormously), crew injuries including having to performing trephination on a man called Ramos who has bleeding on the brain, fending off the barbs of Milady Cossile who seems intent on making Coade realise something (he finds herself intriguing and infuriating to almost equal measure), and a disturbing sense that something is not quite right.
That sense of something being nigglingly wrong is shared by readers who aren’t given any reason why, at least initially, while the story has shifted continents and timeframes, until the true extent of what is happening to everyone onboard the Demeter (captain by a Mr. Van Vught), as the ship is known, becomes gradually and astonishingly clear.
As the adventure progresses, we see Coade watching in dreadful fascination – he is almost reluctant to be there, always dreaming of a happy, settled life on the English coast where he’s a village doctor and untroubled by grand discoveries and imminent existential danger – as the Demeter and its fated crew reach the Edifice, find another ship already at the scene and realise something quite terrible is afoot.
But what precisely and why does Coade feel like he’s seen it all before?
To explain that is to give away too much of Eversion‘s mind-bogglingly thrilling story which is captivatingly epic but like so much of Reynolds’ superlative work is affectingly intimate and movingly human, but we can see some indication of what lies in store waits on the back cover blurb of the novel which rather cleverly shifts tone and location with each successive paragraph.
If that blurb intrigues you, then you will Eversion which manages to keep the mystery alive and percolating while also delivering answers, little by little, a bewitchingly intense balancing act of intrigue and payoff that does not miss a beat through its entirely mesmerising length.
Stories of this ilk rise and fall on how well that tension is maintained but there’s never any doubt that Reynolds is up to the task and that there’s a whole lot going on throughout the book that you need to pay attention to as if your narrative life depends on it.
For all that though, this is not the kind of book that will damn your inattention because while it is fiendishly, excitingly clever, revealing fantastical information in a way that leaves you fulfilled without leaching one ounce of the mystery away, it is wonderfully accessible, a product of Reynolds’ ability to be both epically bold in his storytelling and intimately truthful in ways that thrill the mind and deeply move the heart.
So much of the novel pivots on a touching exploration of what it means to be human, that almost the final act of Eversion is given to finding out what we are willing to embrace heart, soul and mind in order to be truly, wonderfully, enliveningly human.
“‘If she wished to explain herself,’ Ramos said, ‘ she would think of a better way than this.’
‘Unless everything she’s telling us is true,’ I replied.
‘It is,’ she affirmed. ‘But there’s no use in this. You think this is the first time I’ve laid things out for you? We’re way past that. You just refuse to see …'” (P. 178)
That Reynolds is able to do this and still keep the pedal to the medal in a story that barely pauses for breath is testament to his impressive writing talent.
Quite apart from the balance of question and answer, he is also adept at being epic in scope and heartfelt in emotion and never have one diminish or dominate the other, with Eversion, like so many of his other novels, treading a line between the two such that the novel, already compellingly readable, becomes even more so as the stunningly engaging story progresses.
It is a story, by the way, that manages to tell its tale in 304 perfectly judged pages, every single one of them able to justify its inclusion because they are all essential to the servicing of the story.
Eversion is damn near perfect honestly in the way it brings together so many moving parts without ever feeling like it’s overstuffed or favouring one over the other, a beguiling mystery of a novel that is as much about humanity and the pursuit of a valued and worthwhile life, whatever form that may take, as it is a thrilling descent into danger and adventure of the kind that all but demands a hero, like Coade, step and do what needs to be done, even if it may cost him everything in his pursuit of the salvation of those around him.