Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The year is 2057. Humankind has occupied the solar system. The Rockhopper, a comet-mining spaceship staffed by the captain Bella Lind and her crew of engineers, medics, and explorers, is called upon for an important mission. One of Saturn’s moons, Janus, has mysteriously begun to travel out of the solar system at an accelerating speed; it seems to be a dormant piece of alien technology. Their mission is to catch up to Janus and learn its secrets, secrets which could bring humans immensely useful technology or even first contact with an alien species.

I personally loved this book for its very unique, creative ideas; plausibility (making it a part of the awesome hard sci-fi category); and pure thrill. While Reynolds has outlandish ideas, he approaches them with hard facts and plausible science, not taking magical shortcuts until some of the inexplicably complicated alien technology the crew encounters. The narrative follows a sense of practicality in the way the crew approach the situation they are thrown into. Moreover, much of the plot involves interpersonal conflicts that are quite developed over the course of the characters’ unusual mission. Perhaps I tend to focus on the sci-fi, adventuring aspects of the novel, but I feel like Reynolds bungles the character dramas a bit; for example, the conflicts between Captain Lind and one of her subordinates seemed a bit overdone. -Review by Shamik ‘K. ’27

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