Review:
House of Suns
By Alastair Reynolds
Hardcover: 473 pages
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-57507-7-171
Plot Summary:
Some six million years in the future, humanity has expanded to fill the galaxy and has diversified in myriad directions. Humans and human derived beings occupy millions of worlds. Gengineered beings swim in alien seas, or enclose stars in dyson swarms, or convert themselves into post-human entities of super-human intelligence. Alien Priors occupied the galaxy billions of years ago, but are long gone now, their artifacts remaining as examples of technology humanity cannot match. More disturbingly, some millions of years earlier the entire Andromeda galaxy vanished for no apparent reason, although hypothetical Andromeda Priors are suspected. The Machine People, a civilization of AI intelligences, are humanity’s only companions in the entire Milky Way.
Civilizations rise, build empires of interplanetary or interstellar scope, and then eventually fall. All except for the Lines.
Created at the start of humanity’s jump to the stars, each Line consists of a thousand or so clones, or shatterlings, of a single individual (gengineered so half are male and half female), each containing a copy of their progenitor’s mind and memories. Each was equipped with a starship and each set off into space to explore, learn, and eventually rendezvous with their clone siblings at some far distant place and time to share memories before heading out again. Now, millions of years later, Campion and Purslane, shatterlings of Gentian Line, also known as the House of Flowers, are travelling together on their way to the 32nd meeting of the Line and things are not going well.
For various reasons, both will be late to the meeting. Not just a little late, but decades late. Which is simply not done. Even worse, in their time traveling together, Purslane and Campion have fallen in love and falsified their memory records to hide that fact. Which counts as an unforgivable crime if they are caught at it.
Hoping to distract the Line from their failings, the two shatterlings are bringing a member of the Machine People, rescued during their journey to the rendezvous, to the meeting. With luck, the presence of such an honored guest will put the rest of the Line in a forgiving mood and prevent them from examining the memory records too closely.
All these worries are suddenly reduced to insignificance when a distress signal washes over their ships as they approach the rendezvous system. Gentian Line is under attack, the entire solar system nearly destroyed in the process. Most of the Line is dead and the survivors are fleeing to the secret fallback location.
Joining the remaining survivors, trying to determine why the Line was attacked, Purslane and Campion find themselves in a web of intrigue, murder, betrayal, and ancient secrets, all of them growing out of a single enigmatic name: The House of Suns.
OA Relevance: Moderate
While House of Suns is fairly hard science and certainly describes a future similar to that depicted in OA, the far future timescale and technology dilutes this just a bit.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
Reynolds does his usual excellent job of writing in House of Suns. The characters are solid and three-dimensional, the story is compelling, and the ending hints at vistas of literally cosmic size. About the only issue I could find with the book is the occasional bit where things seemed to drag just a little bit, which is perhaps understandable in a story where millennia go by in a few pages due to near light-speed travel or stasis technology. That said, there were one or two sections that could have been a bit shorter without a loss of quality or interest in the story.
Overall Rating: Very Good
Although less hard in its science than the Revelation Space series, the strong writing and epic storyline in House of Suns makes for a fascinating read. Recommended.
More about the reviewer, Todd Drashner, here.
Based on your review, the premise totally had me, but the character stuff seemed a bit contrived. That being said, this book definitely sounds worth checking out. I’ll pick it up next trip to Border’s. Thanks, Todd!