A review by paulataua
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds

4.0

It is a story with two threads. One takes place in a Paris of 1959. ‘A’ Paris rather than ‘The’ Paris because in this version of Paris the Second World war truncated in 1940. Someone here is building a device that endangers the whole universe. The second thread takes place well into the future where archaeologist Verity Auger, an expert on the old city, is maneuvered into traveling through a wormhole to retrieve some vital information. It’s hard sci-fi, but Reynolds, as always, manages to make it accessible to the reader as he welds a detective tale with a romantic element to action packed science fiction . What’s more is that he manages to do it well. I needed patience to keep going until the real story started to become clear but actually came to enjoy the novel more and more as it developed. I have to say, however, I did feel it was that it was a little overlong and the action part nearing the end went on far too long. Certainly worth the time, though.