Slow Bullets
- 192
- Pages
- about 3.5 h
- Reading time
- Locus Award for Best Novella
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
“Slow Bullets” is a compact, well-paced space novella that fits a prison ship in crisis and some striking ideas into under two hundred pages. As an interstellar war ends, the conscript Scur wakes aboard a transport where soldiers from both sides are reviving too soon. Some readers sense a dismissive streak toward religion, softened by the credit the story gives its believers. It is Alastair Reynolds in short form, easy to finish in one sitting.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
From the author of the Revelation Space series comes an interstellar adventure of war, identity, betrayal, and the preservation of civilization itself. A vast conflict, one that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems, appears to be finally at an end. A conscripted soldier is beginning to consider her life after the war and the family she has left behind. But for Scur - and for humanity - peace is not to be. On the brink of the ceasefire, Scur is captured by a renegade war criminal, and left for dead in the ruins of a bunker. She revives aboard a prisoner transport vessel. Something has gone terribly wrong with the ship. Passengers - combatants from both sides of the war - are waking up from hibernation far too soon. Their memories, embedded in bullets, are the only links to a world which is no longer recognizable. And Scur will be reacquainted with her old enemy, but with much higher stakes than just her own life.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.2 across 85 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 37% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.6 | 9 | 11% |
| Hardcover | 7.2 | 76 | 89% |
Frequently asked
How long is Slow Bullets?
It has 192 pages — shorter than 94% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 7.5 and 7.6, closest to this book.
