“What are Alastair Reynolds’s Best Books?” We looked at all of Reynolds’s authored bibliography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!

We took all of the books written by Alastair Reynolds and looked at their Goodreads, Amazon, and LibraryThing scores, ranking them against one another to see which books came out on top. The books are ranked in our list below based on which titles have the highest overall score between all 3 review sites in comparison with all of the other books by the same author. The process isn’t super scientific and in reality, most books aren’t “better” than other books as much as they are just different. That being said, we do enjoy seeing where our favorites landed, and if you aren’t familiar with the author at all, the rankings can help you see what books might be best to start with.

The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

The Top Book’s Of Alastair Reynolds

30 ) Merlin’s Gun

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 29
• Amazon: 26
• LibraryThing: 29

When Sora’s swallowship is taken out by a swarm during the war she is rescued by Merlin, a legendary man who has allegedly discovered a super-weapon built by the Way creators; a gun so powerful it I said to have stopped the previous war. Sora is sceptical, though, for Merlin has been missing for ten…

28 ) Terminal World

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 27
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 25

Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different – and rigidly enforced – level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television…

28 ) Slow Bullets

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 28
• Amazon: 30
• LibraryThing: 23

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 ceasefi…

27 ) Sleepover

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 29
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 29

This story is not part of the Revelation Space series. It was developed from notes for an unwritten novel and maybe one day that novel will be completed, for we need to know the fate of the Earth. This story presents one of the more unusual apocalyptic ideas….

26 ) Poseidon’s Wake

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 26
• Amazon: 28
• LibraryThing: 21

Few SF writers merge rousing adventure with advanced futuristic technology as skillfully as Alastair Reynolds (Toronto Star), the award-winning author of On the Steel Breeze. In the conclusion of his Poseidon’s Children saga, the Akinya family receives an invitation from across the stars – and a las…

25 ) Shadow Captain

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 22
• Amazon: 24
• LibraryThing: 26

The gripping sequel to the Locus award-winning science-fiction adventure Revenger tells a story of obsession and betrayal as two sisters hunt for the greatest treasure in the universe. Adrana and Fura Ness have finally been reunited, but both have changed beyond recognition. Once desperate for adven…

24 ) Revenger

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 24
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 24

A superb science fiction adventure set in the rubble of a ruined universe, this is a deep space heist story of kidnap, betrayal, alien artifacts, and revenge. The galaxy has seen great empires rise and fall. Planets have shattered and been remade. Among the ruins of alien civilizations, building our…

23 ) The Medusa Chronicles

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 25
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 28

A sequel to Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s Nebula Award – winning novella “A Meeting with Medusa,” this novel continues the thrilling adventure of astronaut Howard Falcon, humanity’s first explorer of Jupiter from two modern science fiction masters. Howard Falcon almost lost his life in an accident as the f…

22 ) Blue Remembered Earth

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 20
• Amazon: 24
• LibraryThing: 16

One hundred and fifty years from now, in a world where Africa is the dominant technological and economic power, and where crime, war, disease and poverty have been banished to history, Geoffrey Akinya wants only one thing: to be left in peace, so that he can continue his studies into the elephants o…

21 ) The Iron Tactician

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 21
• Amazon: 15
• LibraryThing: 20

A brand new stand-alone deep space adventure from Alastair Reynolds, featuring the author’s long-running character Merlin, who has previously appeared in “Merlin’s Gun” (1999), “Hideaway” (2000) and “Minla’s Flowers” (2007). When Merlin encounters the derelict hulk of an old swallowship drifting in …

20 ) Century Rain

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 18
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 18

Three hundred years in the future, Verity Auger is a specialist in the archaeological exploration of Earth, rendered uninhabitable after the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. After a field-trip to goes badly wrong, Verity is forced to redeem herself by participating in a dangerous mi…

19 ) Permafrost

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 7
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 27

Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future. Master of science fiction Alastair Reynolds unfolds a time-traveling climate fiction adventure in Permafrost. 2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future o…

17 ) Absolution Gap

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 14
• Amazon: 26
• LibraryThing: 11

A further awe inspiring leap into the darkly imagined future of REVELATION SPACE. With his first novel Reynolds laid the foundations of a galaxy spanning future for mankind. And with each novel he takes us further into that galaxy, reveals another aspect of a future that holds few boundaries. Furthe…

17 ) The Six Directions of Space

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 19
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 14

What if Genghis Khan got his wish, and brought the entire planet under the control of the Mongols? Where would he have gone next? A thousand years after Khan’s death, Yellow Dog is the codename of a female spy working for a vast Mongol-dominated galactic empire. When she learns of anomalous events h…

16 ) Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 17
• Amazon: 10
• LibraryThing: 19

Alastair Reynolds burst onto the SF scene with the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlisted REVELATION SPACE, British Science Fiction Award winning CHASM CITY, and REDEMPTION ARK. Now experience the phenomenal imagination and breathtaking vision of ‘The most exciting space opera writer working today’ (Loc…

14 ) On the Steel Breeze

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 15
• LibraryThing: 17

The award-winning author of Blue Remembered Earth continues his saga as the next generation of the Akinya family crosses interstellar space seeking humanity’ s future… Chiku Akinya, great granddaughter of the legendary space explorer Eunice and heir to the family empire, is just one among millions…

14 ) Troika

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 23
• Amazon: 10
• LibraryThing: 12

In novels such as Chasm City and Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds established himself as an indisputable master of the far-flung intergalactic epic. Reynolds brings that same deceptively effortless mastery to the shorter fictional forms, a fact that Troika, his elegant, compulsively readable new …

13 ) Revelation Space

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 16
• Amazon: 18
• LibraryThing: 10

Dr Dan Sylveste, an archaeologist who has for years been fascinated with the long-dead alien race the Amarantin, is about to discover something that could change the course of mankind. But before he can act on anything his wife is killed and he is captured when a coup sweeps across the planet Resurg…

12 ) Diamond Dogs

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 4
• Amazon: 10
• LibraryThing: 22

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into interstellar space … Alastair Reynolds burst onto the SF scene with the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlisted REVELATION SPACE, British Science Fiction Award winning CHASM CITY, and REDEMPTION ARK. Now experience the phenomenal imagination and breatht…

11 ) Pushing Ice

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 12
• Amazon: 10
• LibraryThing: 13

2057. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclearpowered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. But when Janus, one of Saturn’s ice moons, inexplicably leaves its natural orbit and heads out of the solar system at high speed, Bella is ordered to shadow it for the few vital days before it falls…

10 ) Elysium Fire

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 11
• Amazon: 5
• LibraryThing: 14

Elysium Fire is a smoldering tale of murderers, secret cultists, tampered memories, and unthinkable power, of bottomless corruption and overpowering idealism from the king of modern space opera. Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human pa…

9 ) Zima Blue and Other Stories

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 15
• Amazon: 3
• LibraryThing: 9

…

8 ) Thousandth Night

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 10
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 8

Thousandth Night, the genesis for the epic novel House of Suns, is quintessential Reynolds. A visionary account of intrigue, ambition, and technological marvels set within a beautifully realized far-future milieu, it combines world-class storytelling with a provocative meditation on the mystery, gra…

7 ) Chasm City

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 4
• Amazon: 15
• LibraryThing: 3

Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake – until the day a woman in his care was blown away by Argent Reivich, a vengeful young postmortal. Tanner’s pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitab…

6 ) Galactic North

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 8
• Amazon: 6
• LibraryThing: 7

Gathered here for the first time are Alastair Reynolds’ stories and novelettes set in the universe of REVELATION SPACE, his first bestselling blockbuster. GALACTIC NORTH will include several brand-new stories and novelettes written specially for this collection….

5 ) The Prefect

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 3
• Amazon: 10
• LibraryThing: 5

Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life. A murderous attack against a Glitter B…

4 ) Redemption Ark

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 4
• Amazon: 6
• LibraryThing: 6

Return to the universe of REVELATION SPACE: the Inhibitors are back and Humanity is doomed! Many, many millennia ago, the Inhibitors seeded the universe with machines designed to detect life and then suppress it . . . but after hundreds of millions of years, the machines started to fail and intellig…

3 ) Deep Navigation

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 9
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 2

Deep Navigation is the 2010 Boskone Book by Boskone’s Guest of Honor Alastair Reynolds. It contains a broad spectrum of his work, from his first published story, “Nunivak Snowflakes,” through “The Receivers” and “Monkey Suit,” both published within the last year, plus an introduction by his friend, …

2 ) House of Suns

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 2
• Amazon: 3
• LibraryThing: 3

Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every two …

1 ) Beyond the Aquila Rift

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 1

The Guardian called Alastair Reynolds’ work “a turbulent, wildly entertaining ride” and The Times acclaimed him as “the mastersinger of space opera”. With a career stretching back more than 25 years and across fourteen novels, including the classic ‘Revelation Space’ series, the bestselling ‘Poseido…

Alastair Reynolds’s Best Books

Alastair Reynolds Review Website Bibliography Rankings