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Terminal World

3.63 of 5 stars 3.63 · rating details · 1,802 ratings · 227 reviews

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. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television and electric trains . . .

Following an infiltration mission that went trag...more

Paperback, 490 pages

Published February 1st 2011 by Gollancz (first published December 1st 2009)

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Mar 23, 2010 Liviu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010_release_read, review_fbc, genre-sf, read_2010, t2_recommended_2010

Terminal World was one of my top 5 expected novels of 2010 and it was good but not awesome and the weakest novel I read from Mr. Reynolds as execution goes - I did not like The Prefect and Century Rain as much as the others mainly because I thought the mystery/thriller part in each was too detrimental to the sense of wonder part, but they were well done overall, while Terminal World reads like a draft that needs a lot of editing and tightening. When heroes discuss/declaim before shooting the vil...more

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Oct 05, 2011 Alina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

I enjoyed the Alistair Reynolds space operas I've read, but this novel tops them. It's been described as steam punk -- and the author does find a reason to put goggles on his hero -- but I'd call it imaginative science fiction with a steam punk flavor. Set on a dying, far-future Earth (which probably isn't Earth), this work is a world-building tour-de-force brimming with sense of wonder -- and horror. Zones of differing physical laws divide this Earth, so that technological limits vary from one...more

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May 19, 2013 Michael Stearbs rated it 5 of 5 stars

Of all contemporary SF writers, Alastair Reynolds is (in my opinion at least) one of the most original and outstanding storytellers. I've read most of his "Space Operas" and was blown away by the mind-boggling scale of each one. This book is on a more "contained" scale, set as it is on a future earth and centred largely around one main character rather than a skipping between a bewildering number of scenarios as he did in his "Revelation Space" series.

What I particularly like about Reynolds is h...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Kyle Maas rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed-books

A steampunk-esque space opera surprisingly large in it’s depth and scope, yet it never lets the vast world and technology get in the way of what makes every story important: the characters. Definitely recommended.

Alastair Reynolds is a dense writer. By this I do not mean that he is hard to understand or relate to, but rather than he somehow crams more into the 450 pages of his books than would seem possible. The worlds he creates are complete and innovative, complicated yet relatable, and whenev...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Jamie Revell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Not, I think, one of Reynolds' best works, although certainly worthy for all that. It's set on a world in the far future that is divided into zones of differing technological levels - each enforced by apparently changing laws of physics, and capable of shifting their respective boundaries. That's a pretty interesting concept, and is fairly well explored, although we really only see the mid to low tech levels, with very little of the higher ones.

Much of the story is rather steampunk-ish, being f...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Smcleish rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Originally published on my blog here in May 2010.

Many science fiction novels are in a way more about their setting than anything else: it is something that non-fans tend to dislike about the genre. The best of them, of course, make the setting the core of a wider, rounded, story. Where this core is an artefact, it is referred to in science fiction fandom as a "Big Dumb Object" or BDO, for which the prototype is Larry Niven's Ringworld (see the article in the TV Tropes WIKI for other famous examp...more Originally published on my blog here in May 2010.

Many science fiction novels are in a way more about their setting than anything else: it is something that non-fans tend to dislike about the genre. The best of them, of course, make the setting the core of a wider, rounded, story. Where this core is an artefact, it is referred to in science fiction fandom as a "Big Dumb Object" or BDO, for which the prototype is Larry Niven's Ringworld (see the article in the TV Tropes WIKI for other famous examples). BDOs are usually alien artefacts being investigated by human explorers, and Reynolds has already written some stories of this type, such as Absolution Gap and his debut Revelation Space.

Terminal World is a slightly different kind of BDO story. Spearpoint is a huge, decaying city, towering over its surroundings. Both the city and its environs are divided into shifting Zones, where different levels of technology can work, including one known as the Bane which is so inimical that not even basic forms of life can survive. Both Spearpoint and the Zones are human artefacts, but not ones which the current inhabitants, not even the nano-technology using "angels" of the upper levels of the city, can now understand.

Doctor Quillon, the main character of Terminal World, is a renegade angel, product of an experiment by these people - already drastically changed from their human ancestry - to modify themselves so that they could live in the lower levels of Spearpoint. When it seems that his past is about to catch up with him, Quillon escapes from the city and begins a journey across the strange fractured landscape outside the city. While the doctor is quite a well realised character, this journey, the main part of Terminal World, is more about making it possible for the reader to see more of the Zones and the different cultures which have grown up with each level of permissible technology.

This is a pity, as it means that the plot is pretty rudimentary, just a framework to illustrate the Zones in a way that is less interesting than it could be: I think that the way they affect life in Spearpoint is more interesting than what it is like outside the city. The image of a sophisticated cyborg effectively chaining himself to a boiler room in order to use steam power, while unlikely, is intriguing; while that of the Swarm, a loose federation of airship fliers, is much less so. Some of the plot doesn't quite hold together: for example, the leader of the Swarm has recently developed a means of producing large quantities of medicine which helps humans deal with the physiological effects of the passage from one Zone to another just at the time when a major humanitarian crisis caused by shifting Zones in Spearpoint means that it is urgently needed. A journey of discovery like this is typical of BDO stories, but I would have preferred a plot which remained in the fascinating city; this would perhaps have made Terminal City seem rather like one of China Miéville's novels, but that would not necessarily be a bad thing.

The ideas behind Terminal World are connected with quantum dynamics. In each of the Zones, it appears that the basic structure of matter is slightly different, which means that technologies which rely on, say, electricity may not work in some of them. I don't think the rules are applied quite consistently: how different are the electrical currents in the wire connecting a slight switch and a bulb from the signals in animal nervous systems at a fundamental physical level? So perhaps quantum mechanics - which is suggested by one of the characters in the novel as a possible explanation for the Zones - is not actually behind Reynolds' concept at all, but a red herring.

However, it does fit in with something else: the role of the tectomancers. These are characters with some kind of mental connection to the Zones. They can move the Zone boundaries, and are persecuted and feared as witches or dismissed as legends. One of the more mysterious aspects of quantum mechanics is the role of an observer, whose intervention is required to collaps a statistical description of a phenomenon (the probability that a particle is in a volume of space) to a physical one (the knowledge whether or not the particle is in that volume). Tectomancers seem to be a kind of super-observer, able not just to affect the collapse of the quantum state vector but the rules which define it.

In the end, the combination of one or two good characters, an interesting BDO, and some ideas about quantum mechanics are not enough for Terminal World to be a great science fiction novel. Part of the problem is that none of the characters really understand the Zones, so the reader is not left with much information to work out what they really are, and part is the abandonment of the city for the middle section of the novel. Other questions - such as whether Spearpoint is built on the Earth of the far future, or elsewhere - are left undiscussed, perhaps to provide material for a sequel. Terminal World does make an interesting change from the space opera for which Reynolds is most well known, and is well worth reading by fans of the author.(less)

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Mar 01, 2013 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'm only giving it three stars, as my Kindle reported I was 75% through the book before I felt interested enough to be sure I would finish the book. I'm not a huge steampunk fan, although I don't object to it in principle; so much of this book seemed like introductory material designed to describe a steampunk world. It also took that long to meet a character who was interesting. Most of the characters lack personality and seem to have one defining characteristic tacked onto them so that the read...more I'm only giving it three stars, as my Kindle reported I was 75% through the book before I felt interested enough to be sure I would finish the book. I'm not a huge steampunk fan, although I don't object to it in principle; so much of this book seemed like introductory material designed to describe a steampunk world. It also took that long to meet a character who was interesting. Most of the characters lack personality and seem to have one defining characteristic tacked onto them so that the reader can remember who they are. The main character Quillon is hard to read, and it's very difficult to empathize with him. His sidekick Meroka is equally blank, pretty much nothing more than a generator of colorful speech.

These two set off on a journey that appears to have no other purpose in the story than to describe the planet they are living on. Although they refer to it as Earth, it's pretty clear that it is not Earth and early on we are given hints that it might in fact be Mars, but a Mars that had been terraformed and then seriously damaged in some way. It was looking for more clues about Mars that kept me reading.

Eventually these two encounter a society that lives in dirigibles, and the head of this society Ricasso, is the nearest thing to a scientist they encounter in this world. Then the story starts to take off for me. One of the problems with Quillon is that he is so incurious, so it's weird to go on a planetwide journey with him. Ricasso is curious about everything, and he has some quite frustrating conversations with Quillon since they are so different in this way. A story that featured Ricasso more would have been much more interesting to me.

As should have been obvious for a story that took that long to get going, it concludes in a way to show that this is the start of a series. I'll have to know who the main character is in the next part of the story before I decide whether to continue or not. To be fair, the idea of a post-terraformed Mars and the trauma it has undergone (apparently a big science experiment gone awry) does seem worth the effort now that I'm finished with the book. But I do wish Reynolds had gotten to the point faster. If a writer is going to spend 100s of pages on characters, the reader needs to feel some kinship with them. This is the sort of thing Tolkien did so well and few writers of epic series are able to emulate.(less)

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Dec 26, 2012 Lesley Battler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: keeper

Alastair Reynolds is one of my favourite writers and I was somehwat leery when I encountered so many steampunk tropes; yet more dirigibles, balloons, semaphores, ingenuous male protagonists guided by super-competent or bad-ass women. Okay, I love the super-competent bad-ass women who abound in the steam-punk genre, but I've seen many incarnations of both Meroka and Curtana. Spearpoint reminded of Robert Silverberg's Monad. The Skullboys were generic warlord villains, and TW seemed to lack the ri...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Robert rated it 3 of 5 stars

I broadly enjoyed reading this book, but my big gripe is that the story just stops, in the middle of dramatic events, without explaining what happens to the characters, without explaining the real nature of the world - in particular the "zones" which limit technology and make up the entire premise of the book. There are vague hints, which is fine, but much of it is left entirely unexplained, including the fate of the protagonists. It's written as if there was supposed to be a sequel, but Reynold...more

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Dec 01, 2011 Rich Kulesus rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alastair's first novel to be described as "Steam-Punk Adventure."

Imagine a world in which invisible, but palpable, divisions of technology exist not because differing enclaves of individuals lack the skill to use them, but because the very fabric of the universe only permits a certain level of technology. One permites lasers and antigravity devices, but cross a boundary and your advanced technology irreparably damages itself, leaving you functionally with only steam-powered tools, or worse. This...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Mattias rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: recommended

"Terminal World is a snarling, drooling, crazy-eyed mongrel of a book, equal parts steampunk, western, planetary romance and far-future SF".

Den här boken kan inte jämföras med mycket annat, men leder närmast tankarna till Mievilles The Scar, med klassiska inslag av Mad Max. Berättelsen utspelar sig i en framtida värld på nedgång där teknik inte fungerar som vi är vana, om ens alls. Steampunk är en passande beskrivning, även om det finns många andra element som gör världen helt unik. Det är ocks...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Michael Harry rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

The story was excellent and moved along at a good pace with some surprises and lots of action. There was always something worth happening and no lagging places. The characters were well done and they developed nicely in ways that felt real and because of things that happened or people they met. Neither Quillion, the main protagonist or Meroka, his protector end up the same person they were at the beginning.
The setting is excellently done, I guessed where it was and though it isn't clarified I'm...more

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Jul 15, 2011 Mark Cheverton rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

I've enjoy reading Reynolds space opera, even though they do tend to all blur into one book, however his latest novel is a departure from the usual spaceship chasing galaxy spanning stuff. This is much more of a steampunk book, veering a little into fantasy - not necessarily a bad thing, but not what people may be expecting.

Two things really let this book down for me; firstly I just couldn't find the characters motivations believable, particularly the main character of the doctor who's obsession...more

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Mar 11, 2011 Tim Hicks rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

I suspect that this book was meant to be read quickly and not examined too carefully. In that way, it reminds me of Gaiman's "Stardust."
Many of the reviewers that didn't care for it seemed to be disappointed that it isn't like Reynolds' other books.
I suggest that you approach this one without expectations other than having an enjoyable read.

Reynolds builds his world on some outrageous assumptions, but then follows the rules by not making any more assumptions, just playing out the consequences...more

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Apr 26, 2010 David Hebblethwaite rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It’s more-or-less exactly a year since I read an Alastair Reynolds novel for the first time, and now here I am, looking at his latest book. Once again, I had a great time reading him – though I can’t shake the feeling I like the idea of Terminal World (and here I’m referring to the underlying structure of the story, rather than the novel’s setting, which is a fine creation) more than I like how that idea plays out in actuality.

At some point in the future, after even the word ‘science’ has been f...more It’s more-or-less exactly a year since I read an Alastair Reynolds novel for the first time, and now here I am, looking at his latest book. Once again, I had a great time reading him – though I can’t shake the feeling I like the idea of Terminal World (and here I’m referring to the underlying structure of the story, rather than the novel’s setting, which is a fine creation) more than I like how that idea plays out in actuality.

At some point in the future, after even the word ‘science’ has been forgotten by many, there is Spearpoint, a giant vertical city divided into ‘zones’, each of which, by some quirk of reality, has a limit to the technology that will function within its boundaries; the further up you go, the more advanced is the technology that becomes feasible. Passing through a zone boundary places great strain on a human body, and ‘antizonal’ drugs are needed for survival (though they’re not a panacea; they just mean you don’t die as quickly).

In the zone of Neon Heights (whose level of technology is equivalent to that of a couple of decades or so before our time), an angel (highly advanced human, that is) falls from the levels above, and is taken to the district pathologist, Quillon. This apparent accident has been engineered just to get a message to Quillon; the pathologist is himself an angel, who was modified to see if the human zones could be infiltrated – and now the angels are coming after him.

In short order, Quillon is given a female bodyguard/courier, Meroka; covertly escorted from Spearpoint; and sets off across the lawless face of Earth to the safety of another human settlement. Capture, intrigue, rescue and discovery all ensue.

The thing that struck me first of all about Terminal World was that Reynolds is a great writer of pace; especially at the beginning, he keeps the plot moving with merciless efficiency. Unfortunately, the pace flags a bit towards the middle, though it does crank up again towards the end. I also found the characterisation rather sketchy (Meroka, for example, never seemed to me to become much more than a ‘tough female bodyguard’, and Quillon felt too much like someone the story happens to, rather than a fully rounded character).

But… Reynolds does something particularly interesting in this novel, which is to take a world with a puzzle at its centre (i.e. what happened to create the zones?) and make that puzzle a tangent to the main story. In other words, this isn’t a straightforward tale of Uncovering the Secret of the World – but, you know, that’s not to say it doesn’t happen… As I said at the beginning, I like the idea of this technique, but I’m not sure how well the mix actually works; in a way, it seems to work against the forward momentum of the story. Still, despite these reservations, I enjoyed Terminal World; it’s a good read.(less)

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May 14, 2010 Paige rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: britannia, postapocalyptic

My comment on Twitter about halfway through Terminal World remains true: this is what I wanted out of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and didn't get. Both are the meandering journeys of an outcast and the different cultures he encounters on a far-future dying Earth, but I'm honestly a sucker for readability, which Reynolds has in spades, and character identification, which develops well throughout the novel.

I don't like steampunk. I don't like neo-noir. Yet here both of the subgenre tropes work...more

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Dec 01, 2010 Pamela rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: alternate-futures, charming, bizarre, fantastic, steampunk, sci-fi, obsessed, must-read

I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical at first. Reynolds is so very well known for sweeping space opera that to crack open a book and be confronted with an angel (though he's not what you think!) is rather disconcerting. In fact, I think I had determined not to like the book. And we see where that's gotten me.

The story follows Quillon, an angel modified to live among humans. You see, it's not just a separation of heaven and earth--these people don't have that theology. They follow the Zones...more

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Aug 15, 2011 Ron rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, apochalypse

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I wanted to give this four stars. Or even three. Engaging idea and good story telling. But Reynolds must have averaged a technical error every other page. It was hard to stay in a story with so many details out of whack.

Reynolds should have ridden in a hot-air balloon--if not a dirigible--before writing a story centered on the care and use of same. "...as the ground cools, we'll lose lift." Really? At four "leagues" (see below) altitude (60,000+ feet!?)in an unpressurized vessel, the crew is occ...more I wanted to give this four stars. Or even three. Engaging idea and good story telling. But Reynolds must have averaged a technical error every other page. It was hard to stay in a story with so many details out of whack.

Reynolds should have ridden in a hot-air balloon--if not a dirigible--before writing a story centered on the care and use of same. "...as the ground cools, we'll lose lift." Really? At four "leagues" (see below) altitude (60,000+ feet!?)in an unpressurized vessel, the crew is occasionally breathing oxygen. No, they're dead.

Folks are all worried about obtaining fuel, but never a word about their source of "sun gas." And yet, without propulsion, one dirigible almost immediately starts to sink because it's losing gas. And there are hundreds of craft in this lighter-than-air fleet. Since it's apparently hydrogen (even though only at the end of the book does it burn) (and they don't have ready supplies of water or electricity) no clue where it comes from. But hundreds of dirigibles--one "half a league" long--have supposedly been floating around for centuries.

Reynolds apparently used "leagues" without reference to the conventional meaning: three miles. Maybe he tossed it in as a convenient undefined-long-distance term. Things happen which only make sense if "leagues" on this non-earth earth are shorter than a statute mile: kilometer or less works best . . . except for how tiny that makes the planet. Sloppy.

He thinks winters at the equator are cooler than summers. Absent monsoon and sea breezes (no seas here), they're not.

"One of the Moon's two halves..." I hope he meant two round moons at half phase, but that's not the way he words it. A hemispherical moon could not maintain that shape long. Anything more than single digit "leagues" would soon assume a spherical shape, especially after hundreds of years. And two of them shouldn't be in stable orbits--much less stable in the same orbit.

That said the whole thing would be more satisfying if the protag weren't so stupid--not to mention being a slow learner. And him an "angel" and a doctor. The female Huck Finn companion was nicely done.

And the story doesn't end so much as taper off to nothing.(less)

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Nov 12, 2012 Stéfanie rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 19, 2010 Taylor rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really liked House of Suns, so was happy to see another Reynolds book. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed. I felt like the characters weren't very interesting, the pacing was odd, and the ending was frankly horrible (if that's for sequel purposes, then that annoys me a bit more, even).

The ideas and setting were interesting, but I felt like they got less interesting the more we learned about them. Like the ideas were great in theory but on paper they weren't realized enough, and we never...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Tommy Carlson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alastair Reynolds takes a shot at steampunk. And it's not bad at all.

It's a fun read. I liked the characters. I liked the story. And Reynolds has a knack for dodging tropes upon which others would dwell. I would list some, but they would contain spoilers. Maybe you'll see the same ones avoided that I did. Maybe not. In any case, I like it when I think I see where the plot is going, groan about it, then get pleasantly surprised when it doesn't go in that direction.

I do have one nit to pick. In a...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Jim rated it 1 of 5 stars

Well, I did manage to finish this one. Alastair Reynolds is a very imaginative writer, certainly, but sometimes he comes up with a situation that just seems completely unworkable to me. There was the ice world with gigantic cathedrals trundling around and around, and now this: a future Earth with mysterious, shifting "zones" where different levels of technology suddenly cease to work.

Okay, so some people live on the side of this mysterious gigantic black artificial mountain, Spearpoint, which h...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Wow massive in scope and brilliant! The story starts with our hero Quillion in an undercover role working in Neon Hights morgue. As the story progresses it quickly becomes apparent that he is not all that he seems even though he is wants to be exactely what he appears. The story progresses at the beginging with an almost dective black and white film noir to it. This is clever enough but before long Quillion is looking for help from various quarters and finds it in the form of Frey who knows his...more

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Dec 05, 2011 Jeroen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: steampunk

Let me put op front that Reynolds' shift from his hard sci-fi novels to a somewhat less sci-fi inspired universe did not turn out to be for the worse. Nor did it for the better, but Terminal World still stands as a worthwhile novel. The thought that jumped through my mind when I was nearing the climax---or, indeed, the lack thereof---was that this novel had something in common with another collection of novels that I own. What it shares is its setting and with which it shares it is the Book of t...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Bob rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

This is a fascinating science fiction read, and I enjoyed reading it very much. It's imaginative and unpredictable, and quite an interesting premise.
However, with that said, there were a couple points I couldn't quite follow. The world is a hideously savage place outside of the carefully structured "zones" where the story begins. It seems almost excessively so: they keep bouncing from one horrifying group to another, until they get to "Swarm", hinted at ominously early on, but Swarm ends up bei...more

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Apr 09, 2011 Kelly rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the first book I read by Reynolds. I had talked a friend into having a sci fi book club and this was one of the three titles we had considered. Terminal World has a lot of really interesting concepts
Angels aka post humans; a city so huge it is broken into zones. The zones represent different levels of technology and people cannot survive long in other zones unless they take medication. There are skullboys, a bunch of really mean murderous outlaws as well as vorgs , a type of decaying cyb...more

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May 26, 2012 Jeff rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jeff by: found it on the library shelves

Shelves: science-fiction

I love a good novel that builds a world ever so methodically, single observation by single observation, some crucial to the narrative, some off-the-cuff asides, all culminating in a well-developed, well-understood world.

SPOILER ALERT: Even though all the characters believe they are on Earth, as the reader piles up the evidence, it becomes clear that this isn't Earth at all. I believe the planet is Mars, although Reynolds never overtly spells it out. My reasons? The "two halves of the Moon," the...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Ian Peterson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: scifi

As an unashamed Alastair Reynolds fan this book was high on my books to read. Reynolds has thus far failed to disappoint. This book, however, was a marked departure from his other novels and short stories. I felt like he was trying to capitalize on the steampunk craze that is sweeping speculative fiction, while still holding on to his radical post-human background.

Terminal World centers around and Earth vastly different than our own. Earth's population is centered around Spearpoint, a massive st...more

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Mar 20, 2011 Nina rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the first novel I read by Alastair Reynolds. Except for an interesting science-fiction plot, I didn't have any expectations. I saw his name mentioned a couple of times in other blogs. So I thought I give it a try.

"Terminal World" takes place on a future Earth. The world is split into different zones which have different effects on organic and an-organic life forms. In some zones, electronics can work. In other zones only less complex machines like steam machines work. Or there are zones...more This is the first novel I read by Alastair Reynolds. Except for an interesting science-fiction plot, I didn't have any expectations. I saw his name mentioned a couple of times in other blogs. So I thought I give it a try.

"Terminal World" takes place on a future Earth. The world is split into different zones which have different effects on organic and an-organic life forms. In some zones, electronics can work. In other zones only less complex machines like steam machines work. Or there are zones where no technology works at all.
Similar problems exist for humans and animals. There are zones where no life at all can exist. And there are zones where only further developed humans can exist. They are called angels and live in a higher-technology-zone.
This is the world Alastair Reynolds invites you in to follow the protagonist along his way.
The story starts in Spearpoint, a city built into the structure of a gigantic tower which reaches high into the sky. And with high, I mean stratosphere high. The city is divided into quarters, defined by the zone borders. The zones are laid out like broken glass splinters after someone drove a spear into a mirror. Some zones are large, some are small. Their borders are invisible to the eye, but whoever comes close to one feels the physical impact.
I find this to be a fascinating world, and any kind of story would be interesting as long as it takes place in this world.

The impression I got from the book is that it's about the world, not about the people. All the characters are only there to explore the story world. The world is the main protagonist. Everyone else is only reacting to things happening to the world. If the world wouldn't start to change, none of the appearing characters would lead a different life.

I like this book, because of the story world. What I don't like and what threw me off while reading are some scenes where characters just talked to give the reader information. It was done in a way that it was a too visible exposition for my taste. I can't list any examples without giving away spoilers, so I won't do it.

However let me try to explain what I mean. When person A says he doesn't believe that person B has some power, and when person A later tells person C all about this power and explains how important it is and what has to be done while I as the reader haven't seen any internal monolog or other kind of development that showed how person A changed his mind or got all this knowledge, then this behaviour is simply not convincing to me.
Things like this happened a few times, and it really annoyed me. Also there was at least one scene which felt too much like "deus ex machina", because the foreshadowing wasn't sufficient.

Despite of these formal issues and the fact that I didn't like the protagonist, because his naivety and behaviour annoyed me most of the time, I still recommend this book to anyone interested in science-fiction.
The world is worth taking a look at, and if Reynolds would write a sequel to this book to explore the creation of the zones and actually explain why the world is as it is, I would buy and read it.(less)

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Mar 11, 2013 Tomhl rated it 3 of 5 stars

2013 paperbackswap.com SF Challenge; category #13 a Locus Award winning novel from any year (or nominee, 2010 or later) This novel was a nominee for 2011 Locus Award, but did not win.

Initially, I thought this read like an imitation of Perdido Street Station - it unreels a tour of a bizarre series of settings, with a bizarre series of characters, seemingly without any consistency. But eventually it does settle down into an airship adventure on a world of declined technology, and nearly magical te...more

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Goodreads Librari...: Missing Cover on 9780575084933	3	44	Sep 12, 2011 10:16pm

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About Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds, former scientist and now full-time writer. Most of what he writes is science fiction, with a strong concern for scientific verisimilitude (although he is prepared to break the rules for the sake of a good story). He has lived in England, Scotland and the Netherlands where he worked as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency until 2004, but now makes his home back in his...more

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Quotes from Terminal World

“A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.” — 26 people liked it

“At one time, the treatment for a certain kind of psychosis had been to push an ice pick up through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobe; the ice pick was then stirred around until it reduced the problematic brain tissue to non-functioning porridge.” — 3 people liked it

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Terminal World

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