I Read Books: Century Rain
Century Rain
It’s Paris 1959 and part-time jazz musician part-time private detective Floyd has a case investigating the death of Susan White, a mysterious young American woman. The police thought it was an accident that she fell from her balcony but her neighbour is not so sure.
It’s Paris 2266 and archaeologist Verity Auger is involved in an accident. The Furies, the machines that scoured the Earth of life in the late 21st Century, mostly avoid the city, but someone dies, sort of. To get out of trouble she’s offered a mission – to find an agent, Susan White.
Floyd’s Paris isn’t like ours; the German offensive in the Ardennes in 1940 stalled and then was bombed into the mud. France is becoming authoritarian, there are no rockets or computers or atomic bombs.
Humanity is divided and there’s a secret wormhole on Phobos. It was in the hands of the Slashers, the nano-tech galactic network faction 23 years ago*. It’s now in Auger’s faction the Threshers, who control Earth and its orbit and have turned their back on the machines.
The Slashers released the amusica virus in that last war; Auger will be unimpressed by Floyd’s playing.
As ever with Reynolds, a lot of ideas, many of them sketched, though you can feel the study behind them. A time-travel spy thriller, though that’s not quite what it actually is either.
Read This: For some weird future/alternate history
shenanigans with some clever bits (for example without WW2 the Enigma codes
have not been cracked)
Don’t Read This: You prefer actual history
* A 1936 start date for your Century Rain Hearts Of Iron campaign lads