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One of the most interesting points in some writers' careers is when they abandon the setting of their first successful works and try something new. Often enough there is pressure -- from publishers and readers alike -- to keep returning to the well of one's first success. And I don't doubt that, for the writer, there is a certain comfort factor in dealing with familiar material. Alastair Reynolds's first four novels (as well as many shorter works, including those in his only other book) were all set in a common future, and they met with some popular success, and critical praise (from me as well as others). But the setting was showing signs of being played out. So I for one was happy to see him set off in a different direction with Century Rain. And I was interested to see if his most salient talent -- a spectacular hard-SF imagination -- would still be evident. (To be sure, Reynolds has published a fair amount of fine short fiction in other universes than that of his first novels).

In Century Rain, I can say unreservedly that his spectacular hard-SF imagination is as evident as in his earlier books. That said, some of Reynolds's weaknesses remain: this book is as long as the earlier ones, and I rather think each of his novels would have been better at 3/4 the length or less. His prose is serviceable but not really elegant. His characters (with a couple of exceptions) are fairly stock. But that is -- well, not quibbling, but acknowledging weaknesses that are not fatal weaknesses. (Quibbling would be complaining that in Century Rain there is a character who claims to be from "Dakota" in 1959, and an actual American never even asks "What do you mean, North Dakota or South Dakota?". Hardly a serious problem, but it did annoy me throughout.) So -- acknowledging its weaknesses, I still enjoyed this novel, and I was often fascinated, by the end quite moved, and occasionally awed.

The story begins on two threads. One concerns Wendell Floyd, an American in Paris in 1959. But his Paris is rather altered: its technology lags our own 1959 just a bit, apparently because World War II never happened: the German advance on France stalled in the Ardennes, and Hitler was shortly later deposed. But the evils of fascism were not eliminated, and France in 1959 seems ready to come under the sway of a nasty nativist politician. Floyd is a sometime jazz musician who mainly works as a private detective, and he is drawn into investigating the mysterious death of an American woman, a death the police seem only too quick to write off as an accident or suicide.

Rich Horton is an eclectic reader in and out of the SF and fantasy genres. He's been reading SF since before the Golden Age (that is, since before he was 13). Born in Naperville, IL, he lives and works (as a Software Engineer for the proverbial Major Aerospace Company) in St. Louis area and is a regular contributor to Tangent. Stop by his website at http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton.