I’m very slowly making my way through the massive 700+ page novels by Alastair Reynolds (three down, many to go) but I took a side trip with this short story/novella mainly because I like a challenge. It is very much out of print and available on Amazon for something like $125. There is *one* copy of it in the New York Public Library system. I tracked it down, read it in one sitting, then sent it back into the stream.
Is it any good? Yes, because Reynolds is incapable of writing something that doesn’t have a few “woah, where the hell did that idea come from?” moments every 30 pages.
This one is something of a space spy story, but (as usual) with characters that are both good and bad and over long stretches of time tend to play both sides of that line. It imagines an alternate Earth where Genghis Khan conquered the world, and the Mongol Empire is now making leaps into deep space (hey, just go with it.) What they find in some wormhole hub thingy is, well……maybe I shouldn’t spoil that for you.
