After a busy last month or so, I’ve been stuck on how best to address Pushing Ice. It’s a fantastic story, and probably one of the most important novels for Reynolds — at least in my opinion, since he seems to have improved upon some areas that were quite glaring from his Revelation Space series. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s brilliant at hard science fiction space opera, if not one of the best. Yet as any writer will say, the more you write, the better you get. Pushing Ice definitely reinforced that statement.
Reynolds, once again, stuffs his writing with brutally efficient and wonderfully complex descriptions. For some it’s probably seen as abrasive writing, but then what good novel doesn’t require you to take that little extra time. I read Pushing Ice in about four-and-a-half hours, with nearly all of it on a plane. Perhaps it was the gentle lull of the engines, and the noise cancellation routines chugging away in my headphones, but I found myself transfixed on the story. The pace he set maintained itself thoughtfully, unlike previous novels that were oddly paced, with areas receiving necessary focus as needed.
The characters were great, and with dashes of humour and some wonderful scenes of intense ‘hardcore space opera.’ The human quotient is never far, especially given the sheer vastness of the story. His mind-bending revelations hit the reader with a serious blow, especially when it comes to the scale of what he is presenting (though I will leave it up to you to determine whether that scale is in in terms of physical space or, perhaps, time). I did catch myself thinking upon Clarke’s 2001 series, with hints of Rama tossed in along side H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, but that’s neither here nor there. Comparisons exist for every novel, and for Pushing Ice to be rubbing shoulders with some Sci-Fi classics, I think that speaks highly of how far Reynolds has come.
Overall it was an enjoyable read, smooth comes to mind, much like the flight when I read this book.