Terminal World

Terminal World
By Alastair Reynolds
Gollancz £18.99, 584 pages
FT Bookshop price: £15.19

Alastair Reynolds made headlines last summer when he signed a £1m 10-book deal with Gollancz. The first of these is not due until next year. Until then there is this wildly imaginative genre-stretcher to be going on with.

Unlike Reynolds’ earlier Revelation Space books, which made his name, the action centres on the vast vertical city of Spearpoint, the sole metropolis on a far-future Earth. Its various zones support different levels of technology. Quillon, the book’s hero, is a renegade from the ultra-hi-tech uppermost levels who is hiding out in the 1940s-esque Neon Heights. When his cover is blown, we follow him down through Steamville and Horsetown to the outside world – and into some very high-stakes adventures.

A couple of Quillon’s fellow travellers veer close to cliché, but Reynolds fleshes them out so skilfully and tells his tale with such verve that you just keep turning the pages. You can see why Gollancz reached for its chequebook.