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Noir Opera
May. 3rd, 2006 04:21 pmParis 1959 - an American private detective investigates a possible murder of a young woman while the police ignore things. The man hiring the detective dies and the detective's partner becomes the main suspect. In the meantime the detective falls in love with with the woman claiming to be the sister of the first murder victim.
Yep, you are spot on, it is a space opera :-) - Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds. Yes there are also spacecraft, nanotechnology, post-spike civilisation, space battles, wormholes, strange alien artefacts - you get the idea. What isn't there is time travel. So what you have is an interesting way of combining noir and space opera.
The noir side of it does not quite ring true compared to the real thing. Maybe it is the contrived situation, but I suspect that it is simply that Reynolds is not really familiar with the style. But he is familiar with space opera. In fact I would say that this is his best space opera since Revelation Space, perhaps even better. Certainly the story is easier to follow and hence the book is easier to read. So just when I was getting ready to stop reading Reynolds because his books were steadily getting worse he comes up with something pretty good. Leaving his familiar universe and trying something new seems to have done the trick.
Yep, you are spot on, it is a space opera :-) - Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds. Yes there are also spacecraft, nanotechnology, post-spike civilisation, space battles, wormholes, strange alien artefacts - you get the idea. What isn't there is time travel. So what you have is an interesting way of combining noir and space opera.
The noir side of it does not quite ring true compared to the real thing. Maybe it is the contrived situation, but I suspect that it is simply that Reynolds is not really familiar with the style. But he is familiar with space opera. In fact I would say that this is his best space opera since Revelation Space, perhaps even better. Certainly the story is easier to follow and hence the book is easier to read. So just when I was getting ready to stop reading Reynolds because his books were steadily getting worse he comes up with something pretty good. Leaving his familiar universe and trying something new seems to have done the trick.