There’s little to no sci-fi in the first 30% of this book and you’d be forgiven for thinking Reynolds was just indulging himself in a seafaring romp.

I read the book blurb, took a good look at the cover (blue version) and googled Eversion, which led me to watch animations of what sphere eversion could look like. Bit by bit, Silas learns the truth of the story he thought he was the author of, and of his own identity. Doctor Silas Coade is an occupant of the sailing vessel Demeter, that is plying the waters off the Norwegian coastline. Doctor Silas Coade wakes from disturbing dreams, on the steamship Demeter, in pursuit of an extraordinary find almost too incredible and too strange to believe, secreted within a lagoon in the icy inlets of Patagonia.A good part of its delight is the scraping away of layers through the stories iteration to discover what is really happening with the mission. Well, that was amazing, start to finish, and a gamble, initially, since I had never read anything by this author before, having heard he wrote hard science fiction, which isn’t my thing. I've never read a book by Alastair Reynolds but it's an author I'm aware of and know he's a well thought of name in the sci-fi community.

I had to flick back to the information page as I was sure I had seen it was a Reynolds story but the beginning didn't seem anything like past reads. All of this becomes clear only after certain revelations that change how you look at past events, so rereading this book will be an interesting experience with that knowledge in mind. A narrator at first unaware that he is unreliable and amnesiac, who flails his way through doubt, flawed memories, and misapprehension, and then is finally able to cast aside false consciousness for enlightenment, Silas is a worthy counterpart to the protagonists of Borges’ “The Circular Ruins,” Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, the Westworld series, and the Blade Runner and Matrix movies.One of the crew members, a mathematician whose calculations hold the key to the rescue, is named “Dupin”–I love the reference to Poe’s detective. I'm not sure either works perfectly - but this doesn't stop the mystery being a wonderful experience for the reader, as long as you are prepared to let go and see how things develop, rather than expect to understand everything that's happening before getting near the end. To say more would be to give spoilers, but I will tell you the reveals are well-timed and powerful, the novel’s conclusion both satisfying and thought-provoking. I was enraptured by the ingenuity of its construction, the (apparent) frailty of the main character, the premise and its conclusion, but I deeply missed the vastity of the universe. The titular “eversion” refers to both the topological paradox of a sphere being turned inside out without tears or creases and the physical situation of the knowledge-sucking mind-spider lurking at the heart of the edifice.