Revenger (Revenger, #1)

by Alastair Reynolds

The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Amongst the ruins of alien civilisations, building our own from the rubble, humanity still thrives.

And there are vast fortunes to be made, if you know where to find them . . .

Captain Rackamore and his crew do. It's their business to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds which have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded with layers of protection - and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely-remembered technologies inside. But while they ply their risky trade with integrity, not everyone is so scrupulous.

Adrana and Fura Ness are the newest members of Rackamore's crew, signed on to save their family from bankruptcy. Only Rackamore has enemies, and there might be more waiting for them in space than adventure and fortune: the fabled and feared Bosa Sennen in particular.

Revenger is a science fiction adventure story set in the rubble of our solar system in the dark, distant future - a tale of space pirates, buried treasure and phantom weapons, of unspeakable hazards and single-minded heroism . . . and of vengeance . . .

• ISBN10: 0575090537
• ISBN13: 9780575090538
• Publish Date: 15 September 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 5 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Gollancz
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

Review originally posted at Simply Adrift.

• I was very excited to read Revenger because I had heard a lot of good things about it from people that I have similar reading tastes with.
• I was expecting a sci-fi read with a bit of romance. This book was not that. It was so much better. It was also a lot edgier.

What I liked

• This story of Revenger had a lot going on, so much happened and it felt like I got exactly what I wanted from it. A beginning, a middle, and an end.
• There was no romance in this story but that doesn't mean there weren't relationships. I loved the relationship dynamic between Arafura & Prozor and also Arafura's robot Paladin. Paladin was an unlikely addition that worms his way into the story.
• Arafura changed and grew throughout the story. It was a drastic change but also a justified change.

What I didn't like

• I felt like I wanted more of a resolution with some things, like the story isn't quite complete, yet it is because there is nothing let to tell. There were a few loose ends that I wasn't happy with, I wanted more of a resolution to them.
• The world of Revenger was so in-depth and vast, all of the slang words took a while for me to wrap my head around. But so did the technology and the baubles. I still don't really understand how baubles work, why they open and close, how a person becomes a reader of them and knows when they're going to open etc. I felt like it was never explained, but then I also felt like had it had an explanation then it wouldn't have made sense. Sometimes not knowing just makes more sense.
• (show spoiler)[The ending was a bit cliche, it wasn't too much of a surprise for me so I wasn't too blown away.] (hide spoiler)

Always,
Jordon

This review was originally posted on Simply Adrift

[Rinn]

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review. Also posted on my blog, Rinn Reads.

When I was first sent a copy of Revenger for review, my immediate thought was of the excellent but criminally short-lived TV show Firefly. However I seem to draw this comparison now for all books revolving around a spaceship crew. I love stories of life on a spaceship, from Firefly to my favourite video game Mass Effect.

Unlike many of the previous tales I’ve read, watched or played, Revenger is told from the point of view of a teenage girl. Arafura is a privileged young woman, the youngest daughter of a wealthy man. Her sister, Adrana, is the more confident of the two, the more adventurous and bolshy. Arafura seems meek and timid, reluctant to follow her sister into trouble but also too scared to let her go off alone. The book starts with them escaping their ‘nanny bot’ and stowing away on a ship, where the adventure begins.

There is just so much action from the very beginning of this novel that it is impossible not to feel draw in instantly. I was unsure of Arafura as a narrator at first – the boring sister, perhaps, the less adventurous one – but actually this decision worked so well. The reader follows Fura as she grows in confidence and matures, as she learns what revenge means. There were plenty of other likeable characters too, although there wasn’t always time to get to know some and get a sense of who they really were due to a rather quick changeover in some cases. The villain of the story, Bosa Sennan, has some fantastic folklore built around them that really made me feel as if humankind had been space-faring peoples for centuries. And the idea that Bosa Sennan’s ship could just come out of nowhere, undetected was pretty terrifying.

I actually really enjoyed the premise of what the ship’s crew actually did – exploring abandoned alien bases/ships/planets, that were only accessible during certain periods of time, and looting everything that could be found. I’d love a whole novel based purely around that! It sounds like some cool sort of space archaeology/exploration.

Whilst this is pitched as a Young Adult novel, don’t let that put you off if you’re not normally a reader of YA. Similarly, if you’ve ever felt intimidated by Alastair Reynolds’ galaxy-sprawling works of science fiction, don’t be scared off by this one. The tone is completely different, his writing style almost unrecognisible from his previous work such as House of Suns, but every bit just as fantastical and epic. To top it off, the cover is simple but so perfect, demonstrating the vastness and emptiness of space.