Terminal World

By: Alastair Reynolds

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 19 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different - and rigidly enforced - level of technology. Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue.

But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon's world is wrenched apart one more time. If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint's base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon's own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police but by the very nature of reality---and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability.

©2010 Alastair Reynolds (P)2010 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A rousing adventure in a widly original setting." ( Guardian, UK)

Below Par for AR

The story was slow paced and uninteresting. AR is my favorite author and this story was a mix cyber punk and steam punk. Throw in escort mission and various side plots which became extremely limited in scope.

I kept waiting for something interesting to take place but it was not to be.

Contemporary Sci Fi at its best

John Lee is a great narrator and does justice to an excellent book. Terminal World is amazingly inventive, the characters believable and I found it hard to stop listening.

For the people who don't like the ending I have only this to say.... WTF!

The logic of the book is impeccable although it does finish without explaining every possible permutation. The author is relying on you to use some of your own imagination, after all he has just delivered a masterpiece to you on a plate - surely that's not too much to ask.

Brain eating machines, dirigibles, his version of Reavers, mysteries everywhere are found on this dying planet and yet Reynolds holds it all together. If you get this book and don't like it please disregard all of my reviews, we're obviously not compatible.

The Zones are Shifting

Quillon is an odd bird in more ways than one. As a medical examiner for District 3 of Neon Heights he gets to check out all weird brain teaser corpses collected by sanitation. Somebody who cares about him is relying on that to deliver him a message.



Meroka starts out being Quillon’s bodyguard and guide until she evolves into a partner in his realized save the species mission. Their travels bring them in into contact with ghouls, Angels, Carnivorgs, Skullboys, the outcast Military organization of Dirigibles called Swarm and beings with nanomachine infused brains called Tectomancers.



It’s a full book. There is a character, Tulwar, in here that reminds me of the metal guardian from Logan’s Run only this one is Steampunk and greedy. Since we’re tossing genres around get your brain around this work of: Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Dieselpunk, Transhumanist, interdimensional travel.



Excellent crafting and narration throughout get this work four out of five entertainment award units of your choice. Stock up on Zone shift sickness meds and get moving. Enjoy!

I hate how good this guy writes.

Alastair Reynolds is a great author. He's got a clean, concise style to all the books I've read from him. You shouldn't believe in the universe of this novel, but you do. I hate that he's probably smarter than I will ever be.

Great story that just stops

One of the more disappointing endings I've read. The story flows nicely and just when you're ready for it to wrap up and explain everything it just ends. Almost none of the questions raised are answered. Very frustrating.

Great but storyline needs another book

Great overall but expected at least a few more chapters to finish or another book

"OK". close but not quite there

We have a futuristic dystopian world, a travel adventure, foes to fight, and mysteries which never seem to get resolved!?

The way this was left, with so many things hanging that we were left to take on faith?

I wrongly thought that there was going to be a second book.

I really like Alistair Reynolds books, but for me this was only fair.

Great voice acting.

Would have preferred more closure

As far as Reynolds' novels go, this is not at the level of Revelation Space, partly because Reynolds ends the tale without a satisfying resolution. We are presented with a different Earth 10k years in the future where the bulk of the population lives on a vertical screw-like structure reaching perhaps almost into space. The structure is vertically segregated into segments with unknown restrictions on the degree of technology that can function. Biology is a bit more forgiving, but people still experience "zone shifts" with resulting illness.

Our hero represents a modified "angel" from the highest or celestial level who is on the run due to vague factional, political differences. The bulk of the story is an adventure that alludes to the true purpose of the structure, "Spearpoint" and the "how it all went wrong". The ending doesn't so much as resolve the conflicts as it seems to merely explain the real work left to be done.

As is Reynolds' style, the story explores human evolution and in this case, adaptability to extreme changes in some basic laws of nature. What at first appears random and artificial, the zone boundaries for technology to function in reality, conforms on a loose basis with our world today with examples such as cell phones dropping bars, wireless connectivity being geographically dependent, or electrical outlets varying from country to country indicative of "zone shifts".

This is now the 3rd non-Revelation Space novel that has left me expecting either more or a sequel to quickly follow; which is odd since novels set in the Revelation Space series have all been reasonably self-contained.

Urban Sci-Fi

Class warfare in the dismal/distant future.. A good Sci-Fi adventure yarn..with an imagination, i enjoyed the literal vertical stratification of societies .A bit of analogy to what's here now. By the way, the narrator, John Lee is the best..

A Steampunk post-apocalypse

Alastair Reynolds has impressed me with his intellectual sorta-hard-SF space operas, but left me a bit cold in terms of characters and storytelling, the grand scope of his plots dwarfing the human elements. He's a bit like a colder Charles Stross who is not trying quite as hard as Stross does to impress you with his cleverness, even though he's very clever.

Terminal World is a departure from his usual space operas - it's set on one world, that vaguely resembles Earth but isn't, in a post-apocalytic far future. The setting is kind of steampunkish, but steampunk done in a hard-SF way, and more post-human than the usual pseudo-Victorian frippery.

Quillon is a doctor living in a city called Spearpoint. Spearpoint is, as its name implies, a towering sliver of civilization stretched up into the atmosphere, surrounded by a wasted, cold and drying planet. Spearpoint is divided into "zones" that determine what technology works there. At the highest levels are the Angels, who still enjoy advanced technology, while at lower levels are places like Neon Heights, Steamville, and Horse Town. Some places, electronics stop working. Other places do not even allow internal combustion. And there are some zones where even humans can't survive.

At first, the characters seem mostly uninterested in how this state of affairs came to be, because apparently it's been like this for thousands of years, and is now the accepted status quo. Indeed, we learn that despite the obvious remnants of what was once a great, highly technological civilization, most people have little awareness of history or a world beyond their own.

It turns out Quillon is an Angel, or a former Angel. Angels can't normally survive in the low-tech lower levels, but he was part of a special infiltration project that went wrong and left him isolated among hostile humans (or "post-humans" as the Angels call them). When the Angels come after him, he goes on the run. His flight eventually takes him out of Spearpoint altogether, and across the wastelands which are occupied by Reaver-like "Skull-boys" and a rival civilization known as SWARM that exists entirely in the air, aboard a great fleet of zeppelins.

So, Reynolds manages to give us sky pirates and zeppelin battles, and a world-saving adventure that does not really uncover the secret behind Spearpoint and its world, but gives us a few glimpses. At times this felt like one of his epic space operas, albeit confined to a single planet, and at other times, it was more like a steampunk adventure. (Zeppelin battles!)

I liked Terminal World - it feels complete, even with a somewhat vague ending. Clearly Reynolds could write more books set in this world, but it doesn't seem like he plans to.

Alastair Reynolds is probably one of the smartest and best writers of hard SF and space opera today, the kind of SF that actually uses physics and big ideas. Unfortunately, his writing still lacks an essential something to make him one of my favorites - it's as if there is always a certain lofty distance between author and creation that one can sense in his work. His characters are intelligent and interesting, but they are largely plot puppets. Still, this was going to be "three strikes and you're out" but it was more of a base hit, so I'll keep reading him.