Pushing Ice by Alistair Reynolds

I found this book in the HHH airport when I was flying out for Las Vegas. I already had 5 books with me, so I’m not sure why I needed a 6th. Especially when I hadn’t started the July book groups selection, which just happened to be by the same author.

Pushing Ice starts off with Captain Bella Lind. A moon around Saturn, Janus, has decided to up and leave and her ship is the closest one that can follow it. She puts it to vote amongst her crew, then they go. It’s about here were I begin to question her abilities as a captain: you are either in charge or you are not. What’s with this voting business? Anyway, the follow the ex-moon, and one of her crew members and close friends, Svetlana, who is in charge of the engines (eh, Scotty?) comes to her with the news that the powers that be have no intention of them making it back to safety and that they have fooled around with their gas gauges to make the crew think that they can. Svetlana and Bella argue, and Bella must do what she thinks is in the best interest of the crew. Svetlana loses - poorly, I might add.

They are forced to land on the Janus, which is rapidly moving out of the known solar system, they know they have no chance of ever making it back and their only chance of survival is to establish a colony. Svetlana, still harboring a grudge, exiles Bella to the outer fringes of the habitat and confines her there for the next 13 years. Yes. Bella spends 13 years in solitary confinement while Svetlana builds a colony on Janus that is their only hope of survival.

Enter aliens. They contact the colony (which is now growing and having babies and etc, etc,) with the desire to harvest raw materials from the inside of the ex-moon. Svetlana says yes, and through the aliens they find out that they are in a long tube of time and that something like centuries have passed back on Earth. They think they are being held like specimens in a zoo by some other alien, but they don’t know for sure. Svetlana, still harboring a grudge, is persuaded to let Bella back into the colony, which she grudgingly does with lots of angry complaining.

And Bella somehow ends up back in control. A third alien party is threatening. Svetlana has left the main habitat with her followers and have gone further into the ex-moon. The sky is falling! The sky is falling...!

And I completely lost interest. Reynolds appears to do these very large build ups, then BAM! Everything culminates in the last 50 pages. Except that the first 500 weren’t that interesting. He is long on description, long on repetitive explanations and the characters just weren’t interesting. I couldn’t get over the fact that Bella really couldn’t run a ship with absolute authority, that Svetlana could harbor such a deep grudge so for 15 years, and I also found it implausible that someone could survive solitary confinement on a hostile planet for 13 years.

Needless to say, I didn’t finish this book. And I won't now, since I handed it off to the Husband while he was a Ft. McCoy and the book didn't come home with him. Oh, shuckey darn.