The Wreck of the River of Stars (Mass Market Paperback)

But there's an ancient writer's dictum that says, "Show, don't tell." and here Flynn fails dismally. No event takes place without at least a sentence or two explaining its significance. He's also quite fond of discoursing on the internal state of characters - not revealing their thoughts, but giving us armchair psychoanalysis. I wish he'd trusted us to pick up on events without bludgeoning us over the head with them. For instance:
"That was it. That was what would have done it. A kind word leading on to mutual pleasure, but a pleasure which would, upon its evaporation, reveal the pity that drove it - and that woud have destryed her. Fife, for all his faults, had not slept with her from pity, and so had inoculated her, a little, against her awful need to be loved."

A little of that would be fine, but it's ubiquitous.

The characters are involving (Ship is just great!) and well thought out, the story is wonderfully constructed and has it's share of surprises. The narrator's expansions on the character's motivations, misunderstandings and personalities throughout the text are witty, wise and throughly involving. The author's evocation of a romantic future "age of sail" in space, and it's replacement by a more efficient, but more prosaic, technology is well done and emotionally nuanced as well as scientifically accurate.

This is the book to restore your faith in hard SF and beat off the flood of multi-volume fantasy garbage that is threatening to overwhelm us.

As others have indicated, Flynn was channeling Heinlein when he wrote this novel, and that doesn't detract from Flynn's own style. An example of this is the masterful way he gives his world a vivid past that is still in our future, not through the "infodumps" of less polished writers (think Dan Brown), but through casual references interspersed in the characters' conversations.

Fans of Patrick O'Brian may also come away from River thinking that Mr. Flynn has spent more than a few hours in the company of Jack Aubrey and co., from the way he evokes the terminology of an earlier age of sail.

This excellent novel deserves all the accolades it has received.