Once on the surface, Quillon and Meroka encounter the vicious Skullboys, who have been driven mad by the lack of drugs to cushion them from the effects of zone shifts. Also, they experience a cataclysmic zone shift, which they realize has also affected Spearpoint, such that that city appears to be in ruins. After rescuing a mother and her strange child from the Skullboys, they end up rescued themselves by agents of the Swarm, a civilization living entirely on airships. Soon they are enmeshed in the political machinations of the Swarm, allies of the Swarm's leader, Ricasso, who is of a scientific mindset, and wishes to better understand his world and the zones, and also develop better drugs to help people tolerate zone shifts; while his opponents urge more direct action against the Skullboys. But, we soon gather, the most important factor in all this is the young child they've rescued, who seems to be a tectomancer, with strange powers to tentatively control the zones.

Well, that description seems rather busy, and I haven't even mentioned the vorgs, or any of the airship battles, or the Bane, or the Mad Machines, or... but I hope you get the picture, This is a long book, and it's full of incident, and full of neat ideas. The novel does resolve, mostly, the central questions it raises (mainly, what is Spearpoint for?), while leaving others only hinted at. (For example, where is the book really set? I think I know, but the book didn't confirm my guess, which is OK, I think.) So a sequel seems possible, but not necessary. One aspect of Terminal World I failed to mention is the sheer fun Alastair Reynolds has mixing and matching genre tropes: he plays with Steampunk (making sure to include canonical elements like dirigibles and goggles), Westerns, Vingean-zones, hints of Space Opera, hints of noirish mystery ... generally with a light touch.

So -- interesting idea, some nice setting touches, some action. But is all that enough? The problems are, quite simply, character, and plot motivation. I simply wasn't convinced by the characters. It's not just that they aren't particularly three-dimensional, or particularly psychologically complex. We understand that this is the kind of adventure novel that doesn't necessarily require profoundly limned characters. But it does require believable motivations, and at every step I felt a sense of arbitrariness. We are told why people do what they do, but they don't really seem to do very likely things. Similarly, some of the action, while not uninteresting, seems also a bit arbitrary, not really very likely.

In the end, this isn't quite a successful novel. But for all my complaints, I did enjoy reading it, and I had plenty of fun with the exotic setting. Reynolds has done much better, no doubt -- as for example in House of Suns. But this book will do while we await his next.