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A review by thedoctorreads
Neverness by David Zindell
5.0
What if I told you there is a book, written by a mathematician, that’s better than Dune, better than anything in science fiction? What if I told you there was a book that would haunt your every waking dream under the sun?
This a book that I hesitate to talk about because it’s so closely wound up with the strands of not just my childhood, but my younger brother’s as well like the walls of our shared womb. To talk about it, would be to muddy the waters of this memory with my own half-baked opinions without the clarity of my brother’s perceptions. Which is why after you’re done reading this, you’ll need my brother’s take on it as well.
David Zindell’s ‘Neverness’ might still be hanging out somewhere in the dusty shelves of Army Central Library, Rawalpindi, but for us, Neverness has become a city as real as Rawalpindi, maybe even more so. After all, I don’t normally find myself thinking about the government and their political machinations while going about my day. But I do catch myself wondering about Mallory Ringess and his mathematical ship, when the night is glimmering with stars, and a full moon grins bone-bleak in the cold winter sky.
Set in a far distant future, millennia after the destruction of the Earth, humanity has spread far and wide across the known galaxy, mutating and changing to adapt to the myriad of worlds they come to call home. Somewhere, they’ve become ocean dwellers, somewhere they’ve become planet-wide brains, intelligent yet insane. On the planet of Icefall, the city of Neverness stands as a beacon of civilization, a lighthouse in the dark sea of deep space. Meanwhile, capital C Civilization, in all its corrupt decadence and scientific glories, has flowered into a multi-hued but cold gem, and Neverness, with its Academy and scholars (Pilots, Mathematicians, Horologues, Eschatologists, Healers, Scryers—to name a few), it’s crystal colored streets, it’s murderous politics, is its brightest facet.
We meet Mallory Ringess with his best friend Bardo on the night before their graduation from the Pilot’s Academy, tonight they are journeymen still, and full of a novice’s bravado, they crash into a Master Pilot’s bar and Mallory meets Leopold Soli, Lord Pilot, who tells them of the Solid State Entity, a pulsing intelligence in the stars, a ‘goddess’ spanning light-years in space. In a less fortunate turn of events, Mallory swears a suicidal oath to ‘map’ the Solid State Entity, to journey to the capricious ‘goddess’ and gain knowledge from her.
As the plot unfolds in a deadly chain-reaction, David Zindell’s masterful prose keeps it’s hold tightly on your pulse, never letting up for a second. Even as new characters are introduced, new motivations are found, new plots uncovered, you never feel your interest in the world he’s creating waver for even a moment—it is an intoxicating feeling to look up from the pages of your book and find the real world bland and colorless in contrast.
Mallory is not an ideal hero; he is arrogant, quick to take offense and give offence in return, brash and cowardly, but capable of deep introspection as well. His conversations with the Solid State Entity remain some of my favorite sections of writing EVER. Even as they argue about human consciousness and what it means to be a mortal in a universe where the mortality of your body no longer holds you prisoner, you realize how deeply, deeply human all of these character are, how tightly they want to hold on to what makes them ‘them’.
The rapid destruction of the stars, the growing ‘Vild’, the warrior-poets and their conflict with the Academy, the book is rife with ideas, many that I guarantee you, you will not have across before. Even if you’re not a fan of science-fiction, read David Zindell for the beauty of his prose, for his creation of a world that is as real as ours. I often wonder, when I die, will I wake up in nothing? Or will I wake up in the vast Academy of Neverness? I hope it’s the latter.
Favorite Lines:
“Do you hear the ticking, Mallory, my brave, foolish, young pilot? Time—it ticks, it runs, it twists, it dilates, shrinks, and kills, and one day for each of us, no matter what we do, it stops. Stops, do you hear me?”
― David Zindell, Neverness
Also, The whole damn book :P
This a book that I hesitate to talk about because it’s so closely wound up with the strands of not just my childhood, but my younger brother’s as well like the walls of our shared womb. To talk about it, would be to muddy the waters of this memory with my own half-baked opinions without the clarity of my brother’s perceptions. Which is why after you’re done reading this, you’ll need my brother’s take on it as well.
David Zindell’s ‘Neverness’ might still be hanging out somewhere in the dusty shelves of Army Central Library, Rawalpindi, but for us, Neverness has become a city as real as Rawalpindi, maybe even more so. After all, I don’t normally find myself thinking about the government and their political machinations while going about my day. But I do catch myself wondering about Mallory Ringess and his mathematical ship, when the night is glimmering with stars, and a full moon grins bone-bleak in the cold winter sky.
Set in a far distant future, millennia after the destruction of the Earth, humanity has spread far and wide across the known galaxy, mutating and changing to adapt to the myriad of worlds they come to call home. Somewhere, they’ve become ocean dwellers, somewhere they’ve become planet-wide brains, intelligent yet insane. On the planet of Icefall, the city of Neverness stands as a beacon of civilization, a lighthouse in the dark sea of deep space. Meanwhile, capital C Civilization, in all its corrupt decadence and scientific glories, has flowered into a multi-hued but cold gem, and Neverness, with its Academy and scholars (Pilots, Mathematicians, Horologues, Eschatologists, Healers, Scryers—to name a few), it’s crystal colored streets, it’s murderous politics, is its brightest facet.
We meet Mallory Ringess with his best friend Bardo on the night before their graduation from the Pilot’s Academy, tonight they are journeymen still, and full of a novice’s bravado, they crash into a Master Pilot’s bar and Mallory meets Leopold Soli, Lord Pilot, who tells them of the Solid State Entity, a pulsing intelligence in the stars, a ‘goddess’ spanning light-years in space. In a less fortunate turn of events, Mallory swears a suicidal oath to ‘map’ the Solid State Entity, to journey to the capricious ‘goddess’ and gain knowledge from her.
As the plot unfolds in a deadly chain-reaction, David Zindell’s masterful prose keeps it’s hold tightly on your pulse, never letting up for a second. Even as new characters are introduced, new motivations are found, new plots uncovered, you never feel your interest in the world he’s creating waver for even a moment—it is an intoxicating feeling to look up from the pages of your book and find the real world bland and colorless in contrast.
Mallory is not an ideal hero; he is arrogant, quick to take offense and give offence in return, brash and cowardly, but capable of deep introspection as well. His conversations with the Solid State Entity remain some of my favorite sections of writing EVER. Even as they argue about human consciousness and what it means to be a mortal in a universe where the mortality of your body no longer holds you prisoner, you realize how deeply, deeply human all of these character are, how tightly they want to hold on to what makes them ‘them’.
The rapid destruction of the stars, the growing ‘Vild’, the warrior-poets and their conflict with the Academy, the book is rife with ideas, many that I guarantee you, you will not have across before. Even if you’re not a fan of science-fiction, read David Zindell for the beauty of his prose, for his creation of a world that is as real as ours. I often wonder, when I die, will I wake up in nothing? Or will I wake up in the vast Academy of Neverness? I hope it’s the latter.
Favorite Lines:
“Do you hear the ticking, Mallory, my brave, foolish, young pilot? Time—it ticks, it runs, it twists, it dilates, shrinks, and kills, and one day for each of us, no matter what we do, it stops. Stops, do you hear me?”
― David Zindell, Neverness
Also, The whole damn book :P