In the 1900s, Silas Coade is the physician on an airship investigating an inexplicable artifact in the Antarctic.

The book’s synopsis teased a sci-fi adventure across time and space, inviting readers to figure out a grand mystery. While science is crucial to the story, it has a strong, emotional ending rather than a cerebral one. Obviously I cannot give away the answers, but I will say there are clues from the beginning that will make the gears in your head turn. Other than I tried to stay away from spoilers (this is me, going over my review again, shortening and „de-spoilering“ it…). 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.

Perhaps I should have a closer look at his back catalogue and make an attempt at a more coordinated reading experience. Only Silas begins to piece together the resemblances from one version of events to the next, but he has just a few flashes of memory. It gathers up all the threads and ties them up pretty well, and touches on some deeper philosophical themes about one’s existence and purpose. Silas Coade is the assistant surgeon (well, only surgeon) aboard the Demeter, a sailing ship bound for the coast of Norway.

Reynolds uses swashbuckling adventure tropes to raise and answer metafictive questions, and to query and expand the goals of thrillers and other genre-oriented adventure tales. Silas is a well-written protagonist with compelling internal conflict, but you only get the full picture once the book is complete, so it’s hard to judge at first. Possible spoiler: apparently the similarity between Eversion and the Netflix series "1899" is coincidence.There was a lot of exposition dumping towards the end, and some of the characters seemed to get lost in the narrative, but I didn't mind because I was too invested in the story. Reynolds demonstrates his writing skill to great effect in yet another twisty timeline shifting story. Needless to say it is a weaving of narrative, a slow coming together of strands to a truer view of what actually going on.

This story is, at its core, a mystery — Silas attempting to unravel the anomalies in his experience of reality and the unknown artifact while trying to keep his crew and friends alive. The novel highlights how fickle and fragile memory can be, and how self-fashioning sits fitfully within—and often resists—sociopolitical structures. It's even gloomier than his other works and with a longer exposition than usual, but one that will pay off eventually. In my spare time I am a very keen runner, and I also enjoying hill-walking, birdwatching, horse-riding, guitar and model-making. This sequence repeats in the mid-19th century along the Patagonian coast, in the 1920s with the Demeter (now a dirigible) descending into an aperture towards the Hollow Earth in Antarctica, then as a space vehicle diving into the ocean of a Jovian moon.This is a novel that's elegantly plotted, full of surprises and, as first time round, rip-roaring fun. 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. Before long, soon after the crew discover the wreck of the Europa, the ship that was supposed to have brought back news of the walled city (or whatever the structure is), the Demeter faces disaster.