From Publishers Weekly
In this worthy follow-up to his well-received first novel, Revelation Space (2001), an especially intelligent far-future foray, British author Reynolds transmutes space opera into a noirish, baroque, picaresque mystery tale. Honor requires that Tanner Mirabel, a weapons specialist/bodyguard, track down and destroy the man who killed his boss. Tanner's pursuit takes him to the planet Yellowstone, where a nano-plague has mutated the glittering human cultural showcase of Chasm City into something bizarre, dark and extremely dangerous. He's aided or threatened or both, at different times by a host of human and not-quite-human characters. Relying on his own combat skills and hard-boiled attitude, Tanner keeps seeking revenge even though he begins to wonder why he's doing it, especially after intrusions of other people's memories lead him to suspect he's not who he thinks he is. Inventiveness and tone are Reynolds's strong points. Presented in a sustained burst of weirdness, the novel's details are consistently startling but convincing in context, and the loose ends eventually tie neatly together. The narrator's tough-guy stance works too, both as an expression of Tanner's personality and as a defensive reaction to the setting's intimidating strangeness. Think of a combination of the movie Blade Runner and one of Jack Vance's ironic SF adventure novels. If the ending feels a bit flat, that's probably inevitable after the exuberant display of wonders earlier. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
When security specialist Tanner Mirabel loses a client, killed by an assassin named Argent Reivich, he sets off on a manhunt to bring Reivich to justice. His search leads him to the domed community of Chasm City, located on the planet Yellowstone. There he confronts the city's strange, mutated inhabitants victims of a nanotechnological virus and ultimately comes up against his own worst fears and inner demons. The author of Revelation Space combines sf noir with technothriller in a dark vision of the future that belongs in most sf collections.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Returning to the far corner of the galaxy in which he set his first novel, the stunning Revelation Space (2001), Reynolds brews another intoxicating draught of cutting-edge biology, AI, and alien intrigue in the twenty-sixth century. Professional soldier Tanner Mirabel chases the man who killed his boss and his boss' wife across space and time to the astounding Chasm City, a deep fissure where various mutants dwell in a hierarchical but profoundly decadent society. Hunting a murderer, Tanner is himself hunted in a game devised by Chasm City's bored aristocracy, who maintain immortality by using something called Dream Fuel. Tanner takes his licks but gets ever nearer his goal. Unfortunately, he has been infected with a virus by the Sky Haussmann cult. Haussmann was the human starfarer who led the first colonists to these new worlds. He was either a saint or a cruel criminal, but in any case Tanner begins to remember Haussmann's life as if it were his own, and then to wonder whether Haussmann's memories are his own. He finds out he isn't really Tanner Mirabel, and that his plot for revenge is a silly programmed instruction. Yet he follows through with his mission, discovering the almost nauseating secret of Dream Fuel and his true, multilayered identity in a tale suggesting, in the end, that the darkest secrets of the universe may be in the human heart. Reynolds is on fire. John Mort
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Space opera at its fantastic best.


Book Description
In a city overrun by a virus that attacks both man and machine, an agent pursues a lowlife postmortal-and uncovers a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget...

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Melding Plague transformed Chasm City from a thriving utopia into a diseased hulk where lowlifes battle for existence. Pursuing one such abomination, Tanner Mirabel discovers an atrocity far greater than first meets the eye. Stephen Baxter called Reynolds's writing "ferociously intelligent." He was right.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The once-utopian Chasm City - a domed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet - has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted - from its people to the very buildings they inhabit - only the most wretched, grim sort of existence remains." And it is through this city that security operative Tanner Mirabel must pursue the object of his vendetta: a lowlife postmortal named Argent Reivich. But as Reivich keeps slipping through the cracks of Chasm, Tanner will be taken far beyond the mere settling of a score - to come face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In this worthy follow-up to his well-received first novel, Revelation Space (2001), an especially intelligent far-future foray, British author Reynolds transmutes space opera into a noirish, baroque, picaresque mystery tale. Honor requires that Tanner Mirabel, a weapons specialist/bodyguard, track down and destroy the man who killed his boss. Tanner's pursuit takes him to the planet Yellowstone, where a nano-plague has mutated the glittering human cultural showcase of Chasm City into something bizarre, dark and extremely dangerous. He's aided or threatened or both, at different times by a host of human and not-quite-human characters. Relying on his own combat skills and hard-boiled attitude, Tanner keeps seeking revenge even though he begins to wonder why he's doing it, especially after intrusions of other people's memories lead him to suspect he's not who he thinks he is. Inventiveness and tone are Reynolds's strong points. Presented in a sustained burst of weirdness, the novel's details are consistently startling but convincing in context, and the loose ends eventually tie neatly together. The narrator's tough-guy stance works too, both as an expression of Tanner's personality and as a defensive reaction to the setting's intimidating strangeness. Think of a combination of the movie Blade Runner and one of Jack Vance's ironic SF adventure novels. If the ending feels a bit flat, that's probably inevitable after the exuberant display of wonders earlier. Reynolds remains one of the hottest new SF writers around. (Apr. 2) Forecast: Science Fiction Chronicle chose Revelation Space as Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year; Locus selected it as one of its Best First Novels of the Year. Expect this one to receive similar kudos. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal