Terminal World
Encyclopedia
Terminal World is a 2010 science fiction novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds
(ISBN 978-0575077188). It is a standalone novel set in the distant future, and it chronicles the journey of Quillon, a pathologist forced into exile. The Gollancz
hardcover edition of the book was published in March 2010 in the United Kingdom
. The Ace Books
hardcover edition was published in June 2010 in the United States
.
Beyond Spearpoint is the Outzone, the rest of the world. The terrain is primarily a vast, sparsely forested plain crisscrossed by ancient roads, disused railways, and the semaphore
towers responsible for relaying communication between Spearpoint and the towns. Bodies of water like the Long Gash and the Old Sea are rapidly receding, and the world itself is becoming colder. In this harsh land, travelers must contend with Carnivorgs, cybernetic canine-like creatures who prey on people for their brain tissue, and the Skullboys, land pirates that create havoc and anarchy for the sheer thrill of it and because of imperfect zone drugs. These are obtained from the Carnivorgs in return for victims to be robbed of their brain tissue.
Opposing the Skullboys is Swarm, a conglomeration of several hundred airships that formerly served as Spearpoint's military arm, before splitting from the city over a thousand years previously. They have retained a highly militaristic way of life, though with elements of democracy, voting by flags (one per airship) on important matters. They view Spearpointers with great suspicion, possible spies and saboteurs. Other inhabitants of the Outzone they view as just inferior, apart from the Skullboys who are bitter foes. There is internal division about how best to deal with them.
that has somehow lost or confused its history.
Geographical features such as the Daughters, three mountains that were "punched in a sloping line with the regularity of bullet holes", and the Mother Goddess, "the tallest of all mountains, so tall and wide that from its foot slopes it no longer seemed a mountain, but merely a gentle steepening of the ground", correspond to the Tharsis Montes
and Olympus Mons
, respectively.
The size of the world is smaller than Earth
and similar to Mars. At one point, a character estimates that an airship traveling fifty leagues an hour can circumnavigate the world in four days. If a league
is assumed to be 4.8 km (traditional length of a league on land) and a day assumed to be 24 hours long (a martian day is approximately 24.6 hours long), this calculates an approximate circumference of 23,040 km; Mars' circumference is known to be 21,343 km, while Earth's is 40,075 km.
Characters mention navigating using gyroscopes rather than compasses, which is consistent with the lack of a magnetosphere on Mars.
One character tells a story about the founding of the world's two other cities, Fortune's Landing and Soul's Rest, both known to be older than even Spearpoint. According to the story, the cities were founded by twin princes who hailed from a faraway kingdom. One brother, named Spirit
, founded Soul's Rest, while the other brother, Opportunity
, founded Fortune's Landing. This refers to the Mars Exploration Rover
mission. Ostensibly, the cities were founded at the locations where the rovers came to rest: "And so the princes traveled, crossing land and sea, and when after many months they had grown weary of journeying, they set down their armour, gathered it into mounds and on top of the mounds founded two new cities."
The ages of characters, given in years, also imply that either they mature much more quickly than present-day humans, or that the year is much longer than 365 days.
The discovery in a wrecked city of a sculpture of the first landing implies that Quillon and the other characters are far taller than present-day humans, who appear child-sized in comparison (presumably due to Mars' reduced gravity compared to Earth).
There are two moons - though Quillon, at least, believes them to be two halves of a single moon.
The world is described as cooling and dying, as if this was a terraformed Mars that was now reverting to its original condition.
from the Celestial levels at Spearpoint's peak, falls to Neon Heights, further down the spire. The clean-up crew that finds it delivers it to Quillon, one of the zone's pathologists. It is revealed that Quillon was part of a secret angel project to see if angels could be altered to survive in Spearpoint's lower levels. The dying angel tells Quillon that certain factions amongst the angels are searching for him to obtain further information about the results of this project.
Quillon seeks advice from his old ally, Fray, who tells him that he needs to leave Spearpoint if he is to survive in the foreseeable future. He summons Meroka, one of his extraction specialists, to help Quillon out of the city. Quillon and Meroka escape the city, pursued by "Ghouls"- angels with similar, but less sophisticated, inter-zonal modifications that allow them to survive in lower state zones for short periods of time.
They find out that the zones had rearranged themselves totally overnight in what is called a "zone storm". They look to Spearpoint and see that all the lights have gone out, indicating the entire city has been affected by the storm. They venture on and run into an overturned carriage with several bodies having been consumed by the vorgs, carnivorous cyborgs, that harvest brain tissue to feed on. Soon Quillon and Meroka run into a Skullboy caravan and find two prisoners who they release. The Skullboys take them all hostage, then the vorgs turn up and demand fresh meat in return for making drugs for the Skullboys. Meroka offers herself up to the vorgs but before she is harvested the vorg behind her is killed by members from Swarm.
Swarm airmen kill off the remaining Skullboys and Vorg and pronounce Quillons group to be "clients of Swarm". They are taken aboard one of the hundred and fifty airships that make up the entity of Swarm. The gang get taken back to Swarm's HQ and are taken to see the leader Riccasso. Meroka finds out that Quillon is an angel and as she had a chequered past with the angels, no longer speaks to him. Ricasso tells Quillon about his research into finding a complete cure for zone sickness, which would allow people to cross zone boundaries at will.
The two prisoners that Quillon and Meroka released are mother Kalis and daughter Nimcha who both bear the Tectomancer birthmark. However Kalis' birthmark upon closer inspection turns out to be a tattoo used to divert hatred and prejudice from her daughter onto herself. Quillon takes great measures to hide their identity from Swarm because they are as prejudiced as all the other outerland peoples about these "witches". Eventually Ricasso finds out and agrees to kept it from the rest of Swarm as it would cause unrest with the airmen.
Quillon finds out that the serum that Ricasso had been preparing before serves as an effective anti-zonal medication. Quillon asks Ricasso and a few of his most trusted allies to head back to Spearpoint to help out the millions of needy and sick people still living there. After a tense discussion it is decided that the issue will be put to the flags to see who is for or against the idea. Surprisingly the majority say that they are behind the plans, even some of Ricasso's most staunch enemies. Preparations are made to head out to Spearpoint and the serum is prepared for dilution. When one of the scouts comes back after a successful battle with a Skullboy ship they bring back intelligence and maps that the previously dead land of the Bane has had a zone realignment and using the route could be a massive short cut. Ricasso decides that this is the best plan of action even though it is highly dangerous.
In the vorg cage room where Ricasso's lab is Quillon is hard at work preparing the serum for dilution and he gets surprised by Spatha who has a gun aimed at Quillon's head. Spatha demands that Quillon release a vorg to make everyone think that bringing him aboard and letting him loose in the laboratory was a bad idea. However the vorg runs through the ship and causes mayhem, releases the other vorgs in the cages and manages to kill 4 people before Nimcha uses her powers to cause a small zone tremor so the ship is reverted to a lower state zone, killing off the highly advanced vorg. Spatha is arrested and sentenced to death by firing squad.
The journey across the newly opened short cut over the Bane is uneventful at first, until they come across a metallic object in the distance. The Painted Lady, Curtana's ship on which Quillon and Meroka are living is instructed to scope out the object whilst the rest of Swarm carries on its normal course. The object turns out to be a plane, unusual because the Bane is supposedly uninhabitable by anything other than single celled organisms and dirt. Soon they come across more planes, then prop-planes then bi and tri planes until they get to gliders. Many of them are marked with a red rectangle with one large stars and four small stars. (This means nothing to them, but would be consistent with it being the flag of China
in our own era.)
After this they see on the horizon what appears to be a very similar object to Spearpoint, but with no signs that anyone ever lived on its surface. Ricasso and Quillon elect to take a closer look at the building in a balloon as normal airships can't reach the top of the object. They see that unlike Spearpoint this object was never colonised as thoroughly and is hollow which a hole at the top.
Once they get close to Spearpoint they intercept semaphore lines that tell of zone changes on the boundary of their destination which are so low state it would inhibit powered flight. A plan is made to come in steep, nurse the engines as long as possible and finally glide into Spearpoint. The is complicated by the pockets of resistance put up by Skullboys in balloons. There is a fierce battle into which Quillon and Meroka are enlisted, many of the guns and engines fail as they cross into the lower state zones but eventually they triumph.
They reach Spearpoint and land in the middle of a sea of people. They are met with Tulwar's militia force that escort Quillon and Meroka to the Red Dragon Bathhouse. They start to unload the crates of Serum-15 and a stray Skullboy rocket sets fire to the tail of the Painted Lady. Luckily most of the airmen and Curtana make it off the ship with little more than burns but some of the medicine was lost in the hurry to offload it. At the bathhouse Quillon, Meroka, Kalis, and Nimcha talk to Tulwar about the distribution of the serum and about getting Nimcha close to the Mire, inside of Spearpoint, which has been calling to her through her dreams and asking her to heal it. Tulwar agrees to let them travel to the nearest tunnel entrance and suggests that they stay the night to rest after their chaotic journey. The next day they head to the Pink Peacock and enter the tunnel system with Meroka leading them. She smells something amiss with Tulwar's plan and thinks that they are being set up so that Tulwar can remain in power of Spearpoint and prolong the chaos to reign supreme. She diverts from the planned path and they eventually get caught up by Kargas, Tulwar's head of militia, and get into a fire fight. At that point Fray and Malkin turn up with powerful guns and mow down the assailants. Tulwar had informed the party that Fray was dead but this is just another of his deceptions. After talking to Fray they get lead to meet with the Mad Machines, long thought to be an urban myth about the even more mythical tunnel systems by many living in Spearpoint. They meet with Juggernaught and plead Nimchas case and it agrees to take them to see the others. They travel along without Meroka and Malkin who leave to sort out Tulwar and meet with The Final One. She informs Nimcha that she must take a place in the chamber beside the other tectomancers so they can heal the Mire.
After the party leaves Nimcha and Fray down in the chamber they decide to take revenge on Tulwar for his deceptions. They hide in crates of the serum and Meroka shoots Tulwar several times, disabling him by puncturing his steam pipes. Quillon talks to Tulwar about his deceptions then spits up blood and passes out. He has internal bleeding from a shot to his back and is on his death bed. He is informed that an angel was sent out to meet with the rest of Swarm, which had hung back before the zone boundaries, and has told them that they have allies in the celestial levels. Quillon realises that these are the same allies that warned him about his imminent execution and Curtana orders him to travel with Meroka to the Celestial Levels in hopes of saving his life and finding allies to take Spearpoint back from the Skullboys and the unallied angels.
The book finishes with Curtana and Agraffe wonder what changes would befall the planet and Spearpoint after Nimcha has finished healing the mire and wonder what the Mad Machines were talking about when they mentioned Earthgate and going into the planet to reach the stars.
-influenced novel about "the last human city, a vast vertical structure called Spearpoint", a city divided into several semi-autonomous "zones" of differing technological levels. The story focuses on the adventures of Quillon, a pathologist forced into exile from Spearpoint, and involved a "terrible catastrophe" befalling the city.
and concluded "The novel works as a rousing adventure in a wildly original setting, and Quillon's transformation from cold loner to caring human being is effectively charted."
Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Preston Reynolds is a British science fiction author. He specialises in dark hard science fiction and space opera. He spent his early years in Cornwall, moved back to Wales before going to Newcastle, where he read physics and astronomy. Afterwards, he earned a PhD from St Andrews, Scotland...
(ISBN 978-0575077188). It is a standalone novel set in the distant future, and it chronicles the journey of Quillon, a pathologist forced into exile. The Gollancz
Gollancz
Gollancz often refers to the British publishing house Victor Gollancz Ltd.Gollancz, a family name originating from the Polish town Gołańcz , is mainly known as the name of a prominent British Jewish family, including:* Sir Hermann Gollancz , rabbi* Sir Israel Gollancz , scholar of...
hardcover edition of the book was published in March 2010 in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The Ace Books
Ace Books
Ace Books is the oldest active specialty publisher of science fiction and fantasy books. The company was founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn, and began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns...
hardcover edition was published in June 2010 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Setting
The novel is set in an unspecified distant future. Human civilization is largely confined to the city of Spearpoint, home to over 30 million people. Spearpoint (colloquially called the Godscraper) is built on the surface of a vast artificial spire made of a nameless, nearly impermeable black substance. Both Spearpoint and its surroundings are divided into zones: regions of space-time which exist at different energy states. Different zones support different levels of technology, and humans require periodic drug treatments to survive outside their native zone. Within Spearpoint itself, individual zones designate different precincts within the city; further away, they become much larger, with some on the opposite side of the world encompassing entire geographic regions. Spearpoint consists of six precincts of ascending advancement: Horsetown, Steamville, Neon Heights, Circuit City, the cybertowns/cyborg polities, and the Celestial Levels. Deep inside Spearpoint's spire is a theorized core, called the Mire or the Eye of God, near which the zones become exponentially smaller.Beyond Spearpoint is the Outzone, the rest of the world. The terrain is primarily a vast, sparsely forested plain crisscrossed by ancient roads, disused railways, and the semaphore
Semaphore
A semaphore telegraph, optical telegraph, shutter telegraph chain, Chappe telegraph, or Napoleonic semaphore is a system of conveying information by means of visual signals, using towers with pivoting shutters, also known as blades or paddles. Information is encoded by the position of the...
towers responsible for relaying communication between Spearpoint and the towns. Bodies of water like the Long Gash and the Old Sea are rapidly receding, and the world itself is becoming colder. In this harsh land, travelers must contend with Carnivorgs, cybernetic canine-like creatures who prey on people for their brain tissue, and the Skullboys, land pirates that create havoc and anarchy for the sheer thrill of it and because of imperfect zone drugs. These are obtained from the Carnivorgs in return for victims to be robbed of their brain tissue.
Opposing the Skullboys is Swarm, a conglomeration of several hundred airships that formerly served as Spearpoint's military arm, before splitting from the city over a thousand years previously. They have retained a highly militaristic way of life, though with elements of democracy, voting by flags (one per airship) on important matters. They view Spearpointers with great suspicion, possible spies and saboteurs. Other inhabitants of the Outzone they view as just inferior, apart from the Skullboys who are bitter foes. There is internal division about how best to deal with them.
Which world?
While the world the story takes place on is referred to only as "Earth" throughout the novel, it is gradually revealed through anecdotes and remarks by the characters that the world Spearpoint is on is not Earth as we know it. It fits quite well with the world being a terraformed MarsMars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
that has somehow lost or confused its history.
Geographical features such as the Daughters, three mountains that were "punched in a sloping line with the regularity of bullet holes", and the Mother Goddess, "the tallest of all mountains, so tall and wide that from its foot slopes it no longer seemed a mountain, but merely a gentle steepening of the ground", correspond to the Tharsis Montes
Tharsis Montes
The Tharsis Montes are three large shield volcanoes in the Tharsis region of the planet Mars. From north to south, the volcanoes are Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons. Mons is the Latin word for mountain...
and Olympus Mons
Olympus Mons
Olympus Mons is a large volcanic mountain on the planet Mars. At a height of almost , it is one of the tallest mountains in the Solar System, three times as tall as Mount Everest and more than twice the height of Mauna Kea the tallest mountain on Earth. Olympus Mons is the youngest of the large...
, respectively.
The size of the world is smaller than Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
and similar to Mars. At one point, a character estimates that an airship traveling fifty leagues an hour can circumnavigate the world in four days. If a league
League (unit)
A league is a unit of length . It was long common in Europe and Latin America, but it is no longer an official unit in any nation. The league originally referred to the distance a person or a horse could walk in an hour...
is assumed to be 4.8 km (traditional length of a league on land) and a day assumed to be 24 hours long (a martian day is approximately 24.6 hours long), this calculates an approximate circumference of 23,040 km; Mars' circumference is known to be 21,343 km, while Earth's is 40,075 km.
Characters mention navigating using gyroscopes rather than compasses, which is consistent with the lack of a magnetosphere on Mars.
One character tells a story about the founding of the world's two other cities, Fortune's Landing and Soul's Rest, both known to be older than even Spearpoint. According to the story, the cities were founded by twin princes who hailed from a faraway kingdom. One brother, named Spirit
Spirit rover
Spirit, MER-A , is a robotic rover on Mars, active from 2004 to 2010. It was one of two rovers of NASA's ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission. It landed successfully on Mars at 04:35 Ground UTC on January 4, 2004, three weeks before its twin, Opportunity , landed on the other side of the planet...
, founded Soul's Rest, while the other brother, Opportunity
Opportunity rover
Opportunity, MER-B , is a robotic rover on the planet Mars, active since 2004. It is the remaining rover in NASA's ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission...
, founded Fortune's Landing. This refers to the Mars Exploration Rover
Mars Exploration Rover
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission is an ongoing robotic space mission involving two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars...
mission. Ostensibly, the cities were founded at the locations where the rovers came to rest: "And so the princes traveled, crossing land and sea, and when after many months they had grown weary of journeying, they set down their armour, gathered it into mounds and on top of the mounds founded two new cities."
The ages of characters, given in years, also imply that either they mature much more quickly than present-day humans, or that the year is much longer than 365 days.
The discovery in a wrecked city of a sculpture of the first landing implies that Quillon and the other characters are far taller than present-day humans, who appear child-sized in comparison (presumably due to Mars' reduced gravity compared to Earth).
There are two moons - though Quillon, at least, believes them to be two halves of a single moon.
The world is described as cooling and dying, as if this was a terraformed Mars that was now reverting to its original condition.
Plot
The plot begins when an "angel", a posthumanPosthuman
Posthuman may refer to:*Posthuman, a hypothetical future being whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer human by our current standards...
from the Celestial levels at Spearpoint's peak, falls to Neon Heights, further down the spire. The clean-up crew that finds it delivers it to Quillon, one of the zone's pathologists. It is revealed that Quillon was part of a secret angel project to see if angels could be altered to survive in Spearpoint's lower levels. The dying angel tells Quillon that certain factions amongst the angels are searching for him to obtain further information about the results of this project.
Quillon seeks advice from his old ally, Fray, who tells him that he needs to leave Spearpoint if he is to survive in the foreseeable future. He summons Meroka, one of his extraction specialists, to help Quillon out of the city. Quillon and Meroka escape the city, pursued by "Ghouls"- angels with similar, but less sophisticated, inter-zonal modifications that allow them to survive in lower state zones for short periods of time.
They find out that the zones had rearranged themselves totally overnight in what is called a "zone storm". They look to Spearpoint and see that all the lights have gone out, indicating the entire city has been affected by the storm. They venture on and run into an overturned carriage with several bodies having been consumed by the vorgs, carnivorous cyborgs, that harvest brain tissue to feed on. Soon Quillon and Meroka run into a Skullboy caravan and find two prisoners who they release. The Skullboys take them all hostage, then the vorgs turn up and demand fresh meat in return for making drugs for the Skullboys. Meroka offers herself up to the vorgs but before she is harvested the vorg behind her is killed by members from Swarm.
Swarm airmen kill off the remaining Skullboys and Vorg and pronounce Quillons group to be "clients of Swarm". They are taken aboard one of the hundred and fifty airships that make up the entity of Swarm. The gang get taken back to Swarm's HQ and are taken to see the leader Riccasso. Meroka finds out that Quillon is an angel and as she had a chequered past with the angels, no longer speaks to him. Ricasso tells Quillon about his research into finding a complete cure for zone sickness, which would allow people to cross zone boundaries at will.
The two prisoners that Quillon and Meroka released are mother Kalis and daughter Nimcha who both bear the Tectomancer birthmark. However Kalis' birthmark upon closer inspection turns out to be a tattoo used to divert hatred and prejudice from her daughter onto herself. Quillon takes great measures to hide their identity from Swarm because they are as prejudiced as all the other outerland peoples about these "witches". Eventually Ricasso finds out and agrees to kept it from the rest of Swarm as it would cause unrest with the airmen.
Quillon finds out that the serum that Ricasso had been preparing before serves as an effective anti-zonal medication. Quillon asks Ricasso and a few of his most trusted allies to head back to Spearpoint to help out the millions of needy and sick people still living there. After a tense discussion it is decided that the issue will be put to the flags to see who is for or against the idea. Surprisingly the majority say that they are behind the plans, even some of Ricasso's most staunch enemies. Preparations are made to head out to Spearpoint and the serum is prepared for dilution. When one of the scouts comes back after a successful battle with a Skullboy ship they bring back intelligence and maps that the previously dead land of the Bane has had a zone realignment and using the route could be a massive short cut. Ricasso decides that this is the best plan of action even though it is highly dangerous.
In the vorg cage room where Ricasso's lab is Quillon is hard at work preparing the serum for dilution and he gets surprised by Spatha who has a gun aimed at Quillon's head. Spatha demands that Quillon release a vorg to make everyone think that bringing him aboard and letting him loose in the laboratory was a bad idea. However the vorg runs through the ship and causes mayhem, releases the other vorgs in the cages and manages to kill 4 people before Nimcha uses her powers to cause a small zone tremor so the ship is reverted to a lower state zone, killing off the highly advanced vorg. Spatha is arrested and sentenced to death by firing squad.
The journey across the newly opened short cut over the Bane is uneventful at first, until they come across a metallic object in the distance. The Painted Lady, Curtana's ship on which Quillon and Meroka are living is instructed to scope out the object whilst the rest of Swarm carries on its normal course. The object turns out to be a plane, unusual because the Bane is supposedly uninhabitable by anything other than single celled organisms and dirt. Soon they come across more planes, then prop-planes then bi and tri planes until they get to gliders. Many of them are marked with a red rectangle with one large stars and four small stars. (This means nothing to them, but would be consistent with it being the flag of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
in our own era.)
After this they see on the horizon what appears to be a very similar object to Spearpoint, but with no signs that anyone ever lived on its surface. Ricasso and Quillon elect to take a closer look at the building in a balloon as normal airships can't reach the top of the object. They see that unlike Spearpoint this object was never colonised as thoroughly and is hollow which a hole at the top.
Once they get close to Spearpoint they intercept semaphore lines that tell of zone changes on the boundary of their destination which are so low state it would inhibit powered flight. A plan is made to come in steep, nurse the engines as long as possible and finally glide into Spearpoint. The is complicated by the pockets of resistance put up by Skullboys in balloons. There is a fierce battle into which Quillon and Meroka are enlisted, many of the guns and engines fail as they cross into the lower state zones but eventually they triumph.
They reach Spearpoint and land in the middle of a sea of people. They are met with Tulwar's militia force that escort Quillon and Meroka to the Red Dragon Bathhouse. They start to unload the crates of Serum-15 and a stray Skullboy rocket sets fire to the tail of the Painted Lady. Luckily most of the airmen and Curtana make it off the ship with little more than burns but some of the medicine was lost in the hurry to offload it. At the bathhouse Quillon, Meroka, Kalis, and Nimcha talk to Tulwar about the distribution of the serum and about getting Nimcha close to the Mire, inside of Spearpoint, which has been calling to her through her dreams and asking her to heal it. Tulwar agrees to let them travel to the nearest tunnel entrance and suggests that they stay the night to rest after their chaotic journey. The next day they head to the Pink Peacock and enter the tunnel system with Meroka leading them. She smells something amiss with Tulwar's plan and thinks that they are being set up so that Tulwar can remain in power of Spearpoint and prolong the chaos to reign supreme. She diverts from the planned path and they eventually get caught up by Kargas, Tulwar's head of militia, and get into a fire fight. At that point Fray and Malkin turn up with powerful guns and mow down the assailants. Tulwar had informed the party that Fray was dead but this is just another of his deceptions. After talking to Fray they get lead to meet with the Mad Machines, long thought to be an urban myth about the even more mythical tunnel systems by many living in Spearpoint. They meet with Juggernaught and plead Nimchas case and it agrees to take them to see the others. They travel along without Meroka and Malkin who leave to sort out Tulwar and meet with The Final One. She informs Nimcha that she must take a place in the chamber beside the other tectomancers so they can heal the Mire.
After the party leaves Nimcha and Fray down in the chamber they decide to take revenge on Tulwar for his deceptions. They hide in crates of the serum and Meroka shoots Tulwar several times, disabling him by puncturing his steam pipes. Quillon talks to Tulwar about his deceptions then spits up blood and passes out. He has internal bleeding from a shot to his back and is on his death bed. He is informed that an angel was sent out to meet with the rest of Swarm, which had hung back before the zone boundaries, and has told them that they have allies in the celestial levels. Quillon realises that these are the same allies that warned him about his imminent execution and Curtana orders him to travel with Meroka to the Celestial Levels in hopes of saving his life and finding allies to take Spearpoint back from the Skullboys and the unallied angels.
The book finishes with Curtana and Agraffe wonder what changes would befall the planet and Spearpoint after Nimcha has finished healing the mire and wonder what the Mad Machines were talking about when they mentioned Earthgate and going into the planet to reach the stars.
Themes
Most of the main characters are named after types or parts of swords, except for Meroka, who is named after a 12 barrelled, .20mm CIWS.Development
Reynolds announced on April 30, 2008 that he was writing a new novel which he described as "SF ... weird, and it doesn't have spaceships". He elaborated further in an interview in early 2009, saying that Terminal World was a steampunkSteampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
-influenced novel about "the last human city, a vast vertical structure called Spearpoint", a city divided into several semi-autonomous "zones" of differing technological levels. The story focuses on the adventures of Quillon, a pathologist forced into exile from Spearpoint, and involved a "terrible catastrophe" befalling the city.
Reception
Eric Brown reviewed the book for The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and concluded "The novel works as a rousing adventure in a wildly original setting, and Quillon's transformation from cold loner to caring human being is effectively charted."