Customer Reviews

Thousandth Night and Minla's Flowers

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The volume includes two previously published novellas by A. Reynolds. Thousandth Night was previously published in the SF Book Club anthology One Million AD edited by G. Dozois. Minla's Flowers was published in the New Space Opera 1 edited by G. Dozois and J. Strahan.

The first printing of this book is a signed limited edition (2000 copies), hardcover, fully cloth-bound. The dust jackets (yes, plural, since there are two illustrations, front and back) are beautifully illustrated by Tomislav Tikulin. The publisher (Subterranean Press) specializes in limited (and most of them signed) edition works, beautifully crafted (usually hardcover, high quality paper), and with original illustrations.

The reason I'm writing this review is that I've seen a number of reviews on Amazon for Subterranean Press books where the reviewers complain about the number of pages and call the authors sell-outs etc. So keep in mind that you're paying for a beautiful, limited edition volume. If all you're looking is the content, you can pick up the original anthologies.

The inner cover of the book says that, "Like the old Ace double-novels from the fifties and sixties, this book includes two novelettes in one." It delivers two very engrossing novelettes, although there the comparison ends: Reynolds is in many ways better than many of the old pulp-fiction science fiction writers, with the possible exceptions of Bradbury, Asimov and Zelazny.

"Thousandth Night" is a short story that happens before the events of Reynold's "House of Suns" released last year. Members of the Gentian line, who are near-immortal, spacefaring, split off members of a single person, reunite every two hundred thousand years to share their experiences traveling the galaxies. The place of their meeting is a planet built entirely for purposes of the thousand nights they spend sharing their experiences.

This particular story is very prettily written, with descriptions of turrets, towers, and fantastical costumes, with a very subtle nod to Douglas Adams', "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" near the end.

"Minla's Flowers" is the story of a spacetraveler who encounters a planet full of people who are facing a serious planetary emergency, only they don't have space travel, yet (or again). He makes heroic efforts to help them get offworld. This story is much more sad, and unexpected than "Thousandth Night", and if I say more, it will spoil it.

Finally, if you're lucky, which apparently I was, you'll get a signed copy.

Edit: Per the comment below, this run was signed by the author--so it's even better--they're all signed!

If you are a Reynolds fan, this is a must-purchase-now: my amazon.uk order of this still can't be filled, even months after the fact.

This is one of the admirable and original re-releases from The Subterranean Press and is now out of print.

This Dos-a-Dos binding hearkens back to a French tradition of publishing (and, more specifically to the 2-in-1 pulpy, bug-eyed monsters mass market paperbacks produced in the mid-20th century) in which two works are bound together, back to back with two cover images, two title pages, etc.

Here we have a lovely volume from 2009, bound in orange cloth with a sewn binding on quality stock in dustjacket. Cover illustrations by Tomislav Tikulin.

This is a short book that consists of two novellas. Both stories are excellent sci fi.

The story Thousandth Night is from the same "universe" as the author's novel House of Suns, although the stories are different. I thought this novella was actually better than the novel - tighter and more engaging. But House of Suns is also good enough to recommend - if you read that novel, read this Thousandth Night novella first, since it's kind of a prequel and explains the basic setting better.

Minla's Flowers is the other novella in this book. Also an excellent story - great hard sci elements, well-done characters, engaging plot.

If you are a Reynolds fan, or if you like space opera sci fi, this book is a must-read.

I love everything he's written. Big scope, great science, I feel like I have lived a hundred thousand years and explored the entire Universe via his stories. I can't recommend any science fiction writer more highly. Asimov, Heinlein, Niven, Pournelle. Reynlolds is part of the top level pantheon of sci-fi authors.

"They called them Minla's Flowers."

Thousandth Night/Minla's Flowers is a gorgeous book. The artwork (for both stories) is excellent, and the text is nicely spaced out. Of course, simply being pretty is rarely good enough to necessitate a purchase. In that department, my mild obsession with everything Alastair Reynolds no doubt helped a bit. There's plenty to like in his writing. He can write strong characters, both in very dramatic (Chasm City) and very realistic (Pushing Ice) ways; he is one of the absolute best world builders I've ever read; his explanations of mind boggling physics are enough to make me forget how incompetent I am at basic science; and his plotting is fast and filled with twists.

Despite all this, I'm always apprehensive when I pick up Reynolds, and Minla's Flowers is a perfect example of why. It's not that the ideas are inferior - I'm unsure whether Reynolds has ever thought of a concept that's less than brilliant - but, sometimes, the execution leaves them floundering. See, Reynolds is always an intellectual pleasure. If you think about almost any of his stories or concepts, you're amazed. Unfortunately, he doesn't always succeed in crossing the gap and being a visceral pleasure as well.

The novella is primarily about viewing a person's life through snapshots. Well, alright, there's some other stuff. A ship crash lands, an inevitable doom is slowly coming, a people have to go through hundreds and hundreds of years of scientific progress in a century, etc. Really, though, this is the story of Minla. Merlin wakes from his cryogenic sleep once every decade or so, and each time he meets a changed Minla, as she does what she believes is necessary to save her people.

The concept is interesting, and some of the questions raised quite though provoking, but the snapshots are too rare for us to ever really get to know Minla. We can appreciate the changes, yes, but there's no gut reaction when we go from seeing her as a girl to as an elderly woman, kept standing by a mixture of a cane and her own determination. In the same vein, we're never invited into the society of the Skylanders, and we never grow to really sympathize with any of the characters outside of Minla and Merlin.

Thousandth Night, on the other hand, is certainly not a disappointment. House of Suns was one of my favorite science fiction novels, but it has the same problem that all tales of lost glamour have: sometimes you want to see the grandeur, not the ashes. Thousandth Night fulfills that desire perfectly, taking place thousands of years earlier than House of Suns and featuring the Gentian Line in its prime.

We get to attend a reunion, in which each member of the Strand contributes their memories to the collective pool, recounting their experience of the last two hundred thousand years. Of course, the problem with perfection is a marked lack of strife, and so some things pretty quickly begin to go awry. Over the course of the story, we get to solve a mystery, see a space battle, and witness Campion and Purslane embark on the character arks that wouldn't reach their conclusion until House of Suns.

The problem with a novella that fills in so much background, however, is that I'm unsure anyone who isn't familiar with the other text would get nearly as much enjoyment from it as I did. With no prior knowledge, the Gentian Strand might seem a bit too powerful, and the characters - though not flat here by any means - don't truly become worthwhile without the bigger picture.

Thousandth Night/Minla's Flowers is a collector's item through and through. If you want to read everything that Reynolds has written, or if you were as intrigued by House of Suns as I was, this collection is well worth picking up. If, on the other hand, you're just getting started on Reynolds, wait until you've read (and loved) his other stuff before looking into this one.