I know this book. I've read it twenty-something years ago and I would say it was a turning point in my life. The questions this book offered me, the answers this book provided defined who I became later. It still defines me. Finally re-reading it now is like coming home. It is the place where I was born. What is "born" even mean? What is that moment of initial creation?.. creation of initial?.. something that was before it became something? It's like looking at the code - I know what is written, I know what it means, I understand how it works (sort of) but... not one single person will see it same way. Some of them won't even see a code, only it's presentation in form of working "product".

The more I read the more I find myself, my self, my "I", my "Identity" in there.

Among the humanitarian and vital philosophy of life there is a violence and death in this book too. Not "too". Just "there is". I see and remember now how I twenty years back looked at it as it is. As is. As a certainty. Life and Death. Good and Evil. Love and Hate. Peace and War. Truth and Lie. Many other words and concepts. In years that happen after I've read this book our culture moved into a weird way... It's like we began to subjectify all of this, made it uncertain, made it unreal. We made all this ideas into *context dependent perception of information*. Irregardless of reality, facts, sources. Nothing real matter anymore for us. Only what we feel we think we feel. And I fed on this culture for years. I feasted on it. "It's just a game" as the saying goes. For anything from porn and life to war and death. I grown to look at many thing as they all meaningless and I clearly see it now reflecting back on those first experiences in this book while reading it again.

I look at this book now and see how the truth of it was always with me. It's just maybe some days I would prefer to admit and ignore it, maybe some days I was just too lazy to think. Every rope has two ends.

War changes many things. War shows us what is always here. ( )

One of my favourite SF series!So inventive, great characters, good plots, simple and effective style...And some sipritual hints...
Never understood why it is not considered a great sci-fi author ( )

This is definitely one of the better science fiction books of his generation and it contains quite a few new and refreshing ideas as well as a good analysis of the psyche of the main characters. But sometimes the contemplative moments get to be a bit longwinded at the risk of losing the interest of the reader. So, in my opinion, this is a good book, but it has no place in my top ten. ( )

This is a really enjoyable 'big idea' science fiction novel that takes place millenia in our future on the planet Icefall, also called Neverness. It's kind of [b:Dune|1685995|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1311873074s/1685995.jpg|3634639] meets Malory's [b:Le Morte d'Arthur, Vol 1|219265|Le Morte d'Arthur, Vol 1|Thomas Malory|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1195733538s/219265.jpg|18895563] with high level mathematics, posthumanism, and trippy metaphysics thrown in.

The story follows the life of Mallory Ringess, a trainee enrolled at "the Academy" that was founded by a pseudo-monastic order of truth-seekers called 'the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame' hoping to become a pilot. Now in this day and age a pilot is a very special kind of beast who combines the aspects of a theoretical mathematician with those of a questing knight. Using advanced mathematics the pilots are able to navigate within the manifold, a kind of hyperspace that links all parts of the universe, but whose dangers can lead the untrained or the unwary to get lost in the tangled skeins of space-time. The pilots are thus a special breed. They are men and women who live for the precarious dangers of the manifold and who search, quixote-like, for the proof of the elusive Continuum Hypothesis which would allow a pilot to fall from any point in the universe to any other without the complicated mathematical mappings normally required to traverse hyperspace.

It is also a quest for godhood as the pilots search for the secrets known as the Elder Eddas. These secrets are said to allow beings to transcended their mortality and become gods of one sort or another, and the galaxy is sparsely populated with some of these dangerous and unknowable superbeings, former humans whose consciousness is now housed in nebulae or moon-sized computers. This dangerous life has brought about the motto of the pilots: "Journeymen die", for it is few pilots who ever survive to their mastership.

The world Zindell creates is a fascinating one full of strangeness and wonder. Mallory is an interesting character, equal parts idealistic dreamer and pompous ass. His best friend Bardo is even more entertaining...a figure equal parts Falstaff and Porthos. The story bogged down a bit for me in the middle where Mallory and his fellow searchers look for the Elder Eddas among the Alaloi, a group of humans who had 'carked' their flesh and minds to become like the Neanderthals of earth in rejection of the advanced technology used by the other people of Neverness. Overall, however, this is a great tale, bursting at the seams with crazy-awesome ideas that leave a lot of food for the imagination.

Recommended. ( )

There are some stunning ideas in this book and for the first half of the book, it was a real page turner. However, it lost pace halfway through but then picked up. In many ways a spellbinding read, it just needed consistency of pace. ( )