Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds

A simmering war between civilizations in space is nearly ready to boil over.  On one side, humans.  On the other, something more… or something less? 

The Earth is an icy, unlivable ruin, destroyed by a nanotech plague known as the Nanocaust, but the two sides still contend for control of what was once the home planet.   Something has changed, though.  A mysterious discovery is upsetting the balance of power, and there’s a sudden, unexplained need for an expert in the history of Paris.  Somehow, Verity Auger, an archaeologist with a grudge (and some serious legal trouble), ends up caught in the middle.

But that’s all Chapter 2.  Chapter 1?  Fascists, jazz, hard-boiled detectives, and murder most confusing.  Wendell Floyd has got trouble of his own: He’s a musician and a detective, but he can’t make ends meet doing either --or both.  And now he’s lost his best instrument… which is why it’s good that a kindly old man wants a murder solved. 

But can Floyd figure out what’s going on without getting killed, himself?  If he wants to try, he'll have to stay out of the way of the police.  Not because they're investigating the murder.  Just because they don't like him.  And they aren't the sort who think their job is to "protect and serve."

In Century Rain, Alastair Reynolds weaves together a story of two worlds, a story of two troubled people who just want to be left alone to do what they love.  But it's also a story of catastrophe in the making that calls on them to do much, much more.

The story gets off to an intriguing start, with the characters --and indeed the worlds- shockingly different between chapters one and two.  I found that the earliest Verity Auger chapters painted her in a bit of a caricaturish light, but the plot picks up steam quickly enough that I blew through that with no problem and Reynolds rounded her out far more thoroughly as the book progressed.  It’s not entirely clear how much of that was intended to be Auger’s growth as a person through the course of the story and how much was simply a matter of getting to know her better, but she became a far more sympathetic character by the end than she seemed to be at the beginning.

I enjoyed this stand-alone sci-fi/mystery novel quite a lot, and I 'll be seeking out more of Reynold’s work.  He is, I think, better known in the UK than here in the US, but I discovered him through his new book of short stories, Zima Blue, which I found very promising.  Good short stories don’t necessarily guarantee good novels, but in this case it was an excellent bet.

Can anyone recommend which book of his I should try next?  Revelation Space, perhaps?  (I'm a sucker for a good series...)