Well, I'm a fan of A. Reynolds so this review is comparative to his other works. First of all, the fact that you'll like this book or not depends on what you like about Reynolds. For me it's mainly aliens presented in author's style - strange, distant, unfamiliar. Cutting a long story short, this story lacks that. There are, of course, aliens, mystery and such but all presented in a way devoid of praised "sense of wonder".

First half took me pretty long time to read. I had a feeling that actio More...

Dear Alastair Reynolds,

Why do I come back to your books? That's the question I kept asking myself, when reading this book.

This is not to say that all of your books are absolute drivel, like this one is. And, it's true, Pushing Ice is not without some interesting ideas and speculation... that could have been explored in about half as many pages and one third the flat dialogue that one can only skim after awhile.

Now, the tech you have down, and you know your science, which I very much appreciate. More...

Cracking read. I want to read more Reynolds.: I was gripped by the story, from the intriguing beginning to the profound, yet enigmatic, ending.

Mix the TV series Space 1999 with the film Outland and have it written by Carl Sagan, then you will end up with something very like Pushing Ice.

I would have liked to have given it five stars, but there is one thing I found hard to understand about the story; how is it that such a close knit team on the Rockhopper could, so quickly and viciously, fall ap More...

This is the first novel I have read by Alastair Reynolds and I am wondering why I haven’t read any before. We have several in the library, but I had no idea how good a writer he is. I am definitely going to pull some of his stuff off the shelves and onto my pile to read soon.

In this novel we have the story of a group of ice miners who extract water ice from comets and ship it to colonies on planets that have very little or no water like the Moon or Mars. They work for a large corporation and bec More...

"Pushing Ice, all the way home" -Svetlana
That six words completely changed the book for me, because right after hearing them (I'm an audiobook junkie) it conveyed just all the nostalgia the characters had in them, and in a second I grasped the whole depth of their struggle for survival, this is not a space opera, the crew of rockhopper are not in for the adventure and the partying on alien worlds, they are fighting for their lives, never forgetting the people and places they have been forced to More...

I've just tried picking this up again after a long hiatus but I'm going to have to give up and call this one unfinished. This doesn't happen to me often but I can't face reading any more.

The main problem for me is the characterisation. It's all so cardboard cut-out, thrown-together stereotypes, as if stereotypes are somehow okay as long as you mix them up a bit; everyone's reasons for doing things are either underexamined or just make no sense. The only person who feels vaguely non-cardboard is More...

So Janus, one of Saturn’s ice moons abruptly takes off out of the solar system, shedding ice and rock as it goes to reveal the alien spaceship underneath. Fortunate choice, and in every sense, since Janus is the two-faced Roman god of gates and doorways. I could ramble on like the most anal of SF reviewers about how this was an ongoing theme throughout the whole book, but such themes can be found in any book.

Then, after Bella Lind puts it to a crew vote, the mining ship Rockhopper sets off in p More...

This one had just a little too much science in the science fiction.
I dont' really want a description of how the ship works, or all the technology.
IMO, this book could've been half the length. I had to force myself to slog through it.
I did like the fact that the main two characters were strong women. The character development was interesting, up to a point but then I feel like it just petered out, repeated & resolved rather cheesily at the end.
This issues raised were interesting, leaving ear More...

A disappointment, I am not what you would call a fan of Reynolds's works, but this was bad even by his standards.
For one his general world-building in this one was pretty weak, we never got to see a good exploration of the "Spica" structure, just vague hints about its purposes and the fate of its creators, nor was enough about the inner workings of Janus discovered.
All that pales in comparison with the plot-induced stupidity of the various characters and organizations depicted in the book.
Take c More...

This is my first Alastair Reynolds novel. I didn’t read any reviews until after finishing. I must say, people are very divisive concerning this author. I found myself siding with both the lovers and the haters. This is a massive novel of dubious science, poorly constructed, and two dimensional characters. Yet there are sections of brilliance, suspense, jaw dropping imagination and devilish plot twists. What am I to make of this? The guy is a fucking astrophysicist so lets just settle down and go More...

Pushing Ice is my first Alastair Reynolds book. I bought it because it was recommended by the editors at Powell's in Portland (the best bookstore in the western united states, but thats a different story). I'm a big fan of other hard sci-fi authors like Vernor Vinge and Ian M. Banks and this book seemed to have all the right elements of a space opera.

It did not disappoint: it is fast moving, well written, excellent story and it has it all - politics, science, personal drama, aliens. Everytime I More...

I love discovering new space-based hard-sci-fi, and I've heard good things about Alastair Reynolds-- but I've got to say, this just looks like a more fleshed out sampling of Arthur C Clarke motifs so far-- lots of Rendezvous with Rama, plus a bit of 2010 with the Chinese as the bad guys racing to be first. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make me wish I were trying something a little more original of his. I do like reading fiction written by scientists (though I thought he must be a bit More...

I'm going to make my friend Alex sad, but I didn't love this book. I almost put it down after a couple of pages, because the prologue was one of those thousands of years far future scenarios, but I persisted. The first part of the book I did love - a mining ship with a cast of interesting characters whose lives get a lot more complicated when their ship is diverted to race after an alien craft masquerading as one of Saturn's moons. Central to the action are two strong female characters - Bella L More...

I've read a number of Reynolds books before, and Pushing Ice is unmistakably by the same author. It's hard sci fi with an ambition of being realistic, meaning respecting the fundamental limitations of physical reality (the speed of light as a limiting factor in travel time being one example) while at the same time pushing forward thousands if not millions of years into the future.
The book starts out being a smaller story about miners in space in the near future, and this section of the book was More...

This is my first Reynolds book I've read since I finished the Revelation Space series, and I was really impressed. Although I don't consider one of Reynolds' strong suits to be characterization, the character interplay in this novel was amazing, and dovetailed nicely with the larger theme of the book. It's definitely hard sci-fi, lots of technological explanation and science, but it moves at a fast pace and kept me interested until the end.

Unlike most of his space opera novels, Pushing Ice is set in a different universe than the one of the Inhibitors. This gives Reynolds the freedom of a new history and new ideas, but he keeps the high speed but not FTL travel that is a hallmark of much of his space opera.

The story begins as a frame story set some thousands of years in the future, on a distant planet. The polity gathered there have done so to honor the person they consider responsible for the existence of their civilization and pr More...

I liked it well enough, though I don't rank it as high as some other works by Reynolds. I think that he occasionally lost control of the narrative which was a little thin in places and it was not quite as epic as I would have hoped. That being said, there was still a lot to like about it. I have seen criticism of Reynolds' characterization and I have to say that it is unwarranted, particularly when it comes to gender. I have encountered innumerable authors who either resort to two dimensional st More...

warning : might contain slight spoilers !

[7/10] this book falls about halfway between "OK" and "really like it" . Well written, but a bit verbose and light on the scientific speculative part. A lot of good ideas are only touched upon or mentioned in passing, leaving the focus of the novel on interpersonal relationships and some space opera fireworks.

Of the three distinctive parts of this epic, the first - dealing with an industrial spaceship chasing after a rogue satelite - reminded me of the mo More...

...mild spoilers...

So my love of Reynolds' work is becoming embarrassingly well known. To the point where a number of people at Natcon asked me which one they should read. The first person to do so admitted that they are not huge fans of very far-future SF, which therefore makes House of Suns - probably my favouritest of his books ever - a bit inaccessible. And I wasn't sure how she felt about the slightly baroque-feeling SF that is Revelation Space. So I suggested Pushing Ice, because I cannot More...

Janus, one of Saturn's moons, has started moving on an outbound course for the stars. The comet-mining ship Rockhopper, captained by Bella Lind, is sent to shadow it and find out what's going on. As Rockhopper draws near, things get weird.

Then they get really weird.

I've always enjoyed Alastair Reynold's books, but in all the ones I've read before this, there's usually a point where the story starts to drag and I feel like I have to push through. That didn't happen with PUSHING ICE; the story h More...

Alastair Reynolds novel tells the story of a couple hundred comet miners in a not too distant future cut off from Earth, and forced to survive with minimal resources. I've been through this twice; and while I'm still happy to recommend it, it didn't hold up as well as I'd expected. It's full of interesting ideas, and puts a unique spin on contact with alien races; unfortunately these ideas tend to be a bit more compelling than the characters and story used to flesh them out. It's independent of More...

A solid, enjoyable piece of science fiction. "Pushing Ice" follows the crew of a deep-space mining ship as they track an alien artifact out of the solar system and beyond. It grapples with many familiar themes--dissension among the crew; the hard struggle to survive far from home; encounters with hyper-advanced alien tech; first contact--but it does so with Reynold's signature mixture of hard sci-fi and interesting characters.

Reynolds has become one of my favorite sci-fi writers, and while "Push More...

...Pushing Ice was an entertaining read, a remarkably quick one in fact. I usually have to take my time with Reynolds. Entertaining is not the same as good though. The first half of the novel is a very interesting read read for fans of hard Science Fiction but the second part, when long term survival starts to look more likely, is overshadowed by problems with the characterization and the ever lurking danger deus ex machina at the hands of mysterious alien races. The novel simply doesn't even ge More...

Great read. Awesome story. Reminded me of my first moments as a kid, realizing that our earth was just one possibly teeny tiny part of a huge galaxy and then thinking how we might not be as in control as we tend to think that we are. Idea of a ship being stuck in a "structure" and not even realizing that for the longest time is what makes it an awesome plot.

Didn't develop characters really well. Two main characters were women and while he could have really gotten into the politics behind their l More...

I overcame my natural inclination to car-sickness to finish this book. For the last two nights, I'd struggled between putting it down because I knew I needed to be up early the next morning for vacation fun and telling myself, Hey, it's vacation, read the book as much as you want!

Going to sleep in order to fully experience the beauty of New Brunswick, Canada, won out every night, but it was a staunch battle and I was crazy to finish this book! When we finally got in the car for our 6.5 hr drive More...

Alastair Reynolds, an astrophysicist and the author of six previous novels, including the critically acclaimed Revelation Space series (beginning with the title novel in 2000), has established a reputation as the purveyor of big ideas in science fiction, particularly in the space-opera genre. Critics admire the author for his storytelling abilities and his grasp of hard science fiction, as well as for his willingness to explore issues that, in the hands of a less confident writer, might fall fla

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The best, so far, of all the Alastair Reynolds books I’ve experienced. Specific to the writing, this is truly epic Sci-Fi: best in breed. Couple Reynolds’ writing with John Lee’s outstanding narration and this book really delivers.

Pushing Ice takes place outside Reynolds’ Revelation-Space universe, in which so many of his stories are based. There are no tie-ins to the Rev-Space series. That fact caused me to delay this book until I’d finished all his Rev-Space books – thinking this book wouldn’t More...