Product Description

The Ship has travelled the universe for longer than any of the near-immortal crew can recall, its true purpose and origins unknown. It is larger than many planets, housing thousands of alien races and just as many secrets. Now one of those secrets has been discovered: at the centre of the Ship is ...a planet. Marrow. But when a team of the Ship's best and brightest are sent down to investigate, will they return with the origins of the Ship - or will they bring doom to everyone on board? 'MARROW is an extraordinary and extraordinarily intelligent novel stuffed with wonder and wit ...should elevate him to the ranks of the very best writers of the genre' INTERZONE For more information on this and other Orbit books, visit the website at www.orbitbooks.co.uk

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121288 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 502 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Set on an ancient starship as big as Jupiter, Marrow is epic hard science fiction with a millennia spanning plot. A near immortal, genetically re-engineered humanity is the first to reach the derelict ship, approaching from the emptiness of intergalactic space. Taking command, the captains set the ship on a half-million year long galactic cruise, opening the vessel to thousands of races and playing host as in Babylon 5. The ship itself demands parallels with Arthur C Clarke's Rama from Rendezvous with Rama though Reed offers literally bigger surprises...

"Just tell us please... what in hell is down there?"
"A spherical object," she replied. And with a slow wink she added, "It's the size of Mars, about. But considerably more massive." Washen's heart began to gallop. The audience let out a low, wounded groan.
"Show them," the Master said to her AI. "Show them what we found."

Disaster strikes and a group of captains become trapped on the world they name "Marrow". Factions develop, leading to civil war and insurrection, coupled with labyrinthine personal intrigues played out across thousands of years. Given the immortal captains' willingness to decapitate one another, Highlander comes to mind, but while Reed's ideas are interesting he never develops his characters sufficiently to convincingly explain how they cope with the potential tedium of immortality. There are plenty of "big ideas" but it becomes increasingly hard to care about any of Reed's alienated post-humans, while the partially satisfactory ending offers as many possibilities for a sequel as it provides answers.--Gary S Dalkin

Review
'It's an exhilarating ride, in the hands of an author whose aspiration literally knows no bounds' THE NEW YORK TIMES 'MARROW is relentless, taking on vast reaches of space and time with a giant ship like none you've ever seen. A bold work by a visionary writer' DAVID BRIN

From the Publisher
Praise for Marrow

'With his command of prose, characterization and ideas, Robert Reed is the new century's most compelling SF voice. MARROW is the highest of high concepts, one of the most original visions in a long while' STEPHEN BAXTER

'MARROW is relentless, taking on vast reaches of space and time with a giant ship like none you've ever seen. A bold work by a visionary writer' DAVID BRIN

'It's an exhilarating ride, in the hands of an author whose aspiration literally knows no bounds' THE NEW YORK TIMES

'MARROW is an extraordinary and extraordinarily intelligent novel stuffed with wonder and wit ... it should elevate him to the ranks of the very best writers in the genre' INTERZONE

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Customer Reviews

Neither as good or as bad as the reviews make out
Marrow seems to provoke a love/hate relationship. Its not that bad, and has some good concepts thrown together in an interesting format. Like almost all "What's the big secret?" SciFi the final revelations are something of a disappointment, but my main quibble was with the rushed and incomplete resolution, the king when a writer seems to get bored or hits a publishing deadline and wraps it all up in a few pages.

So, the first 4/5 ot the book get 4 stars, the final 1/5 gets 2. Alexander Reynolds is doing the same sort of thing but better. On the big mystery ship front I would also recommend Darwinia by Rober Charles Wilson.

Gaaah! I don't believe it!
I don't think I've been this frustrated with a book in a long time. The premise is fascinating, the setup awe-inspiring, the timespan staggering. Unfortunately the incompetence with which the novel is written is equally staggering.

It's hard to know where to begin; is it the way in which everyone (alien, human, AI or otherwise) speaks in the same voice? The way in which Reed spends pages describing a single moment with no feeling whatsoever for the disruption of the action, then suddenly skips ahead 300 years in the next page? The way in which one can discern no palpable empathy with anyone in the book? There is so much bad, muddle-headed and simply bad here I'm staggered that writers like Stephen Baxter and David Brin were moved to comment on it.

Perhaps most disappointingly, there is no discernable denoument - the whole simply staggers on to an indeterminate dribble of an ending which leaves one thinking "so what?" Yes, things happen, good is victorious, evil vanquished, but since one never got remotely close to these people, it's impossible to care.

Yes, there is a case to be made for the argument that immortals would have little concept of the passage of time, and a day is as meaningless as a millenium, but there is simply no FEELING here; all is cold, empty an impossible to care for.

Save yourself time; read Timelike Infinity for a huge concept far-future novel. Read Look To Windward for a massively high-tech adventure novel. Read Perdido Street Station for a dark, complex fantasy of alien nights. But avoid Marrow like the plague.

Huge imagination, but no eye for detail. (Sub-Banks.)
This book is a puzzle.

The central idea of the ship, and what it might contain in its core is a good one, but unfortunately not one that is fully realised. Too many interesting details are hinted at, but none of the insinuations are fully carried through: What was Pamir's crime that got him thrown out of the Captains? What happened to the Child he had with Washen? What was inside that core? (If some of the characters got to see down there, why didn't we?) Many more questions could be asked, but they would tell you too much about the story.

Ian M. Banks (someone whose name will always come up in this type of argument) is particularly good at bringing everything to satisfactory conclusion, as well as dealing with the human aspect.

Not enough explanation goes in to what people's motivations are. We have to see what happens, and then wait to be told why (Banks would do this, sometimes hundreds of pages later). Unfortunately, the reasons never make themselves known.

On top of this, the rather unlikely scenario that the Ship's crew missed Marrow, whilst others didn't, and the ending leaves you frustrated. I was waiting for the twist that never came. The book-jacket proclaims that "a secret as ancient as the Universe...is about to be unleashed." However, by the ending, 1) it never gets unleashed, and 2) you never get told what it was. Just as you think you you might know what it might be, the ending makes a nonsense of it, and you're left with nothing.

A missed opportunity. 4 stars for the idea, -1 for the execution.