The novel “Eversion” by Alastair Reynolds was published for the first time in 2022.
Silas Coade is the ship’s doctor on the schooner Demetra, which is traveling north of the Norwegian city of Bergen on a quest whose details are known only to those who set it up. Despite modern means such as a steam engine, the journey is dangerous, and that’s confirmed by the discovery of the wreck of another ship.
The Demeter reaches a building that has strange geometries, perhaps the center of the mysteries and secrets surrounding the expedition. Some things are starting to not add up to Silas Coade, is that a consequence of his drug use or is there something else that goes beyond his perceptions? Why does Ada Cossile, the only woman on the ship, seem to know more than anyone else?
Alastair Reynolds is best known as a space opera writer, so a novel that begins on board a steam schooner seems very different from this author’s typical stories. The novel was labeled as gothic science fiction and at the beginning, the author seems to be inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and Dan Simmons and then veers towards tones closer to H.P. Lovecraft. When the Demeter reaches the strange building, one almost expects Cthulhu to emerge from it but at that point, the plot starts having unexpected developments.
The story is told in the first person from the point of view of Silas Coade, the ship’s doctor on the Demetra. Soon, we start noticing inconsistencies in his story, and understanding why he’s an unreliable narrator is the central point of the novel.
Silas Coade’s attempts to understand what’s behind the inconsistencies in his memories but also the nightmares that continually afflict him constitute a puzzle that the reader must follow as well to try to understand where the story is going. In the end, the plot isn’t particularly complicated but it still requires a certain amount of attention so as not to lose its thread.
The tension connected to the events perceived by the protagonist and his attempts to understand what’s really happening maintain the reader’s interest in the first half of the novel. Subsequently, we begin to at least have glimpses of reality, and the interest is revived by the revelations and their consequences.
In Silas Coade’s journey, which is also an inner journey, his interactions with Ada Cossile are important. The woman often criticizes the story the protagonist is writing in his free time and that makes one wonder if Alastair Reynolds has a relationship that’s not entirely positive with some publisher. Again, that made me think of Dan Simmons, recalling the story in “Hyperion” about the poet Martin Silenus, who had quite similar problems.
When the truth emerges regarding the situation of Silas Coade and the Demeter, Alastair Reynolds completely abandons the gothic tones and the story becomes absolute science fiction. The story, with its related mysteries, seemed well constructed and the important characters are developed, an element that is far from obvious in a story of this type and told in the first person.
Overall, “Eversion” seemed to me to be an intriguing novel in which Alastair Reynolds successfully mixes seemingly heterogeneous elements. It’s rather short considering the long novels typical of this author and this helps to maintain a fast pace, another excellent result for a work that contains a lot of dialogue. For these reasons, I recommend reading it. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
