Loved this book.

This book kept my attention the whole way through, good story and great narration.

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I really struggled at first

I really didnt like the narration on this at first. I had to listen a couple of times to get my head into the right space. Luckily the story saved it. It is epic and therefore might require a second listen to thread all the bits together.
However, I must say I have listened to this book at least four times now and really enjoyed it.

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Really enjoyed the story

Thought the story was fascinating and always keen to see where it was heading but I do find the lack of gaps when switching between plot lines off putting.
Better than other performances of his books, found others completely unfollowable

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Somehow did not work for me

I really enjoyed John Lee's performance of Ken Follett's Century trilogy, it worked perfectly. However, for this genre, Sci Fi, it just did not work for me. This was my first book by Alistair Reynolds, so I am not sure, but it just felt like a classic 1950/60s SciFi but it is actually a modern book, performance and material just did not gel.

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Great listen

One of the more enjoyable listens in a while. Good story line and narration. A perfect Alistair Reynolds.

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Instant fan

I hadn’t read/heard anything by this author before, but I certainly will be looking for more. The narrator was fairly good, although unable to perform in different voices for each character. He was further let down by the extremely tight time editing which left no discernible pauses between scenes.

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As interesting as the characters think it is

This is solid hard sci-fi, the story of a human crew pushed to do something extraordinary, and what happens to them under the pressure of it all. The narration takes a bit of getting used to. The. Narrator seems. To insert pauses. In random. Spots. But in the end I quite enjoyed the delivery.

Technically Reynolds paints an interesting and convincing picture of a near future space-faring society. He seems to delight in the intricate details of how a space crew might operate, and the way in which scientific principles that are quite abstract here on Earth become so important in the context of space travel (red shift for example).

It's a story that is ultimately about the relationships between the crew members, which bodes well, but unfortunately the characters are never entirely convincing and the plot skims the edges of melodrama in places.

Perhaps most frustratingly (especially for people drawn in by the similarity to novels like Rama) the characters never share the curiosity and wonder that we feel as readers when they encounter the amazing sights and sounds that the plot gradually reveals. So prepare to spend hours and hours wondering what on Earth Janus actually is, while they bicker, poke around in the engines, play with fish, fiddle with spacetime, and generally couldn't seem to care less.

So in the end although Pushing Ice is an interesting tale with a decent enough pay off, and will still appeal to fans of the genre, it doesn't quite live up to its first promise.

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21 people found this helpful

One of His Best

Loved this Tale - Will Re-Read it very soon - Up there with the Very Best Classic Sci-Fi. Looking Forward to reading more from Mr. Reynolds

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1 person found this helpful

worth powering through the beginning

I wasn't a fan of the pre-janus stuff, but as soon as they land it's great sci-fi all the way.

my only complaint would be the characters act like high school students at times.

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Not as believable as previous Reynolds

I like john Lee as a narrator having come to him through Peter F Hamilton. He lends a seriousness to hard scifi. However I felt that the main characters in this book lacked believability. In the face of such odds such petty behaviour lacked credibility for what you might expect are the cream of humanity. Increasing numbers of obvious narrative devices as the story progressed also reduced believability. However an enjoyable exploration of relativity and interspecies contact.

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