I was expecting hard science fiction, but Eversion begins aboard the Demeter, a ship sailing along the Norwegian coast in the early 19th century. One day read for me, because even though the structure was somewhat jarring, I just HAD to keep going to figure out what the heck was going on.

Several characters of interest play parts across the various scenes, and the positions they play in the grand scheme are familiar enough that it’s easy to follow them through the narrative. The plot is a puzzle and a quest and an adventure, and even if a savvy reader manages to figure out what’s going on before the reveals, it’s still very much worth it and very clever. I read it as a part of monthly reading for October 2022 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. Alastair again used spacefaring as a background to tell a touching story about loss, death, friendship and what it means - or could mean - to be human. It's even gloomier than his other works and with a longer exposition than usual, but one that will pay off eventually.This story is, at its core, a mystery — Silas attempting to unravel the anomalies in his experience of reality and the unknown artifact while trying to keep his crew and friends alive. The narrative follows doctor Silas Coade, who has disturbing dreams and a habit of dying and then continuing the mission on another vessel and in another timeline.

The narrative bogs down, in repeatedly re-establishing the same plot and same characters in each new instantiation, sometimes in the word-heavy writing style of 19th century adventures.So the crew of Demeter realize they are not the first to reach the Edifice after all, and anger centers on Topolsky, who has concealed the previous expedition from everyone else.

This is what your brain will feel like while reading this book as you travel along with the main character, Doctor Silas Coade, and become a passenger in his seemingly living nightmare. Nevertheless, at the centre of this baroque masquerade party resides a sober consideration of what it might mean to go off adventuring, what it might cost. Eversion by Alastair Reynolds is a masterful surprise in this author’s work, and I found myself reading it straight through. The final section of Eversion is probably the most rousing and exhilarating, thanks to the buildup of everything that came before.

Think pulpy adventures with a hard SF twist, mysteries that infold in strange but tangible ways, characters who need to face the hard truths about themselves they are desperate to forget. A mind unraveling under pressure, forced to make choices that cause pain no matter how you look at that. Alas, Reynolds finally drops the mask and allows Silas (and by extension, the reader) to see “reality,” I as let down.

The story moves from sailing ship to steam ship to air ship and onward, all with the same crew and the same mission. I read this in 4 days straight, in my inbetween moments of work and life, and it was truly hard for me to put down.One of my issues with Revelation Space were the poorly sketched characters, barring a few like Scorpio. There were a few emotional beats at the end that landed surprisingly well, since I didn’t expect to be that invested by the characters alone.