Not entirely sure if I’ve just had a really vivid and elaborate dream, or something 😉 I could sum this up as “China Mieville’s The Scar, with airship pirates instead of boat pirates”. Main character gets picked up/pirated by/joins airship pirate gang, hijinks ensue, there’s a big council of airship pirates after which they decide to do a thing but some of them aren’t very happy about it, they fly over a scary-ass monstery desert thing in search of something (food? water? fuel?)… Then they end up getting involved in or leading a war against (or in defence of) an inexplicably conical city… Which to be frank is awfully like the pointy middle bit of Midgar in final fantasy 7 so maybe that’s another component, and possibly Scott Lynch’s Red Sails Under Red Skies…

Not the Edge Chronicles, the childrens series?

Not a million miles away from Alistair Reynolds ‘Terminal World’?

Sounds like a best-seller, Northwind, I should get writing if I were you!

That’s the feller! Quite a few details wrong, I think I’d overwritten all the bits I didn’t like with bits from other novels 😆 Cheers, that’s been bugging me

Now its bugging me 🙂 which one was it? Edge Chronicles or Terminal World?

Not the ‘Kitty Jay’ trilogy by Chris Wooding is it..?

Oh sorry! Terminal World, definitely.

🙂 Thanks Northwind!

Worth a read then? I enjoyed century rain but his other sci fi offerings left me a bit cold.

Sounds good (adds to booklist). Still trudging my way through the latest Hamilton trilogy.

It’s alright. TBH from what I remember there’s a really good story in it but it’s kind of drowned in ideas-for-its-own-sake. Better pacing than most Reynolds (there is no 1000 page spaceship chase) Think I’ll reread it and see what I’m remembering right and what I’m not!

You know this thread is going to go on for ages despite the original question having been answere conclusively.

Better pacing than most Reynolds (there is no 1000 page spaceship chase)

Being on page 3,049 of 6,628 of Mr Reynolds’ Revelation Space Collection, I’m yearning for the relative brevity of Neal Stephenson…

@drlex. Yep Stephenson does try the patience. Whoever thought Cryptonomicon was tightly written? Until the next series…

@drlex, have you done the revelation space series before? I’m absolutely dying to do some spoilering but I’ll resist, come back in 3600 pages…

Man is direly in need of an editor, and that editor is direly in need of a very big axe.

Cryptonomicon was rambling, but very tightly written ramblingness.

f— ya’all

ill bask in reynolds techno ramblings happily, love every word of the revelation space series

terminal world and his last one not a patch on his earlier stuff

i met him at a signing once, he was a miserable git tbh

Anyone complaining about the sprawl of cryptonomicon has not read Reamde I think.

Revelation Space (etc) peeved me thoroughly, because when it’s good, it’s bloomin brilliant. It’s just that when it’s less good, it’s less good for 100000 words at a time. It’s like he read Consider Phlebas and thought “This’d be miles better if I replaced all the exciting scenes with 10 chapters in which nothing happens at all”. The lighthugger chase, aaargh, takes up about a quarter of the book and all he really says is “They chase each other for a while, then one of the ships breaks”

I met him at a talk/signing too and he seemed OK, albeit the talk was pretty dull. I really liked Revelation Space but liked the subsequent books in the sequence a bit less. I did like The Prefect and I think that once I got into it I liked Pushing Ice too. Still have a few of his other books on my shelf to dip into at some point as well.

Kind of got warn out with redemption ark. Haven’t finished the series. Without spoilers, is it worth it? I like the story but there’s so much to read through!

Not long since finished “The Scar”. Awesome book, really enjoyed it.

The Scar was great – best SF book I’ve picked up for a long time. His imagination speaks for itself, but the craftsmanship of the novel was exceptional. Sustaining that story took a lot of skill IMHO.

Waiting for another Bas-Lag novel from him but I guess he lost his way a little with the Iron Council. Ingredients all there but sort of the opposite to The Scar, v flawed at the nuts and bolts level of story-telling.