Evening's Empires

The Quiet War #4

by Paul McAuley

In the far future, a young man stands on a barren asteroid. His ship has been stolen, his family kidnapped or worse, and all he has on his side is a semi-intelligent spacesuit. The only member of the crew to escape, Hari has barely been off his ship before. It was his birthplace, his home and his future.

He's going to get it back.

McAuley's latest novel is set in the same far-flung future as his last few novels (The Quiet War, Gardens of the Sun, In the Mouth of the Whale), but this time he takes on a much more personal story.

This is a tale of revenge, of murder and morality, of growing up and discovering the world around you. Throughout the novel we follow Hari's viewpoint, and as he unravels the mysteries that led to his stranding, we discover them alongside him. But throughout his journeys, Hari must always bear one thing in mind.

Nobody is to be trusted.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

400 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 18, 2013

About the author

Since about 2000, book jackets have given his name as just Paul McAuley.

A biologist by training, UK science fiction author McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction, dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternate history/alternate reality, and space travel.

McAuley has also used biotechnology and nanotechnology themes in near-future settings.

Since 2001, he has produced several SF-based techno-thrillers such as The Secret of Life, Whole Wide World, and White Devils.

Four Hundred Billion Stars, his first novel, won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1988. Fairyland won the 1996 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 1997 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best SF Novel.

Reviews

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

To make this closer to a "conventional review" let me add the two major things Evening's Empires is predicated on - no real spoilers as this is where the book starts:


The big picture: after the Quiet War's finale (see Gardens of the Sun), humanity flourished in many forms as described in the awesome vignettes of Life After Wartime.

However everything ends so the True Empire - brutal, militaristic and hierarchic and racially exclusive as the "true humans", in other words they considered that only people like us today more or less, were humans, while the post-humans, the radically modified humans etc were to be subjugated - based on Earth rose, conquered all more or less and ruled for a while.

Then, some 70 years before the book starts, the Trues made one crucial mistake by amassing the most powerful armada in history and sending it against the AI's of Saturn - called Seraphs, their story mentioned in passing in Evening's Empires - who until then stood aloof of humanity; the AI's annihilated the True Fleet but rather than destroying Earth as they could (see next), they did something arguably crueler taking away 50% of its sunlight so the ice started advancing.

Within a decade 90% of Earth's population died, the True Empire fell and ice covered almost all the planet; later the AI's restored the sunlight but today Earth is still a shadow of its former self and the Solar System is in a decadent, recessionary and pretty basic, "life is a struggle" state, so the Evening's Empires title

In the meantime, far away in a distant galaxy - ok, joking, just on a planet at another star where In the Mouth of the Whale takes place, things happen (read that book for them) that lead to The Bright Moment - a sort of transcendental moment instantaneous across space and time, at least as far as the humanity modest spread in space of about 25 LY or so goes; this took place a few decades prior to the start of Evening's Empires and among other things led directly to the birth of, Gajananvihari Pilot, aka Hari, the main character of the novel.

In the aftermath of The Bright Moment, more upheaval, to add to the Evening theme, and the response of people was generally threefold - mysticism, religions etc; trying for scientific understanding; and the combination of the two, ie understanding in order to transcend; the conflict between followers of these paths powers the action of Evening's Empires.



I am reading Evening's Empires by Paul McAuley and it is just superb so far about 1/3 in; not anything new in structure (boy, ship, hijacked, escape, finding why, pursuit, revenge...) but an imaginative universe of the small worlds in the Solar System a few decades after the events of Mouth of the Whale and the stunning conclusion to those (which we find out only here btw) so some 1500 after the original duology, hence ~3800 AD; everything one wants in sf is here and one of the really original and plausible description of the future I've see recently (eg Im Banks, P. Hamilton or J. Corey are plausible with some assumptions but not that original, C. Priest's Archipelago or something like Venusia are original but less plausible so to speak)

Also in a nice touch the parts of the novel are named Childhood's end, Marooned off Vesta, The Caves of steel, Pirates of the Asteroids, The cold equations and Downward to the earth which are all names that should be quite familiar to any sf lover

I finished the book and while it was very impressive and a top 25, it faltered a little in the last part mostly due to its structure and its main characteristic which was that sense of wonder and mysteries of reality were its driving force, rather than the pretty bland and one dimensional main character or the standard action adventure plot

So while the first five parts with their combination of immediacy, action, revelations, sense of wonder and impressive world building work very well, the last part which takes place across 30 or so years in vignettes consisting a sort of extended epilogue reads more like "future history non-fiction" fiction without any emotional content; a 2 page "this is what happened after" epilogue would have worked much better imho as that would have allowed the author to tell the same stuff and not lose the momentum of the book - here a comparison with the In the Mouth of the Whale is instructive as there the action is completely local and far away from the Solar System (so all the history from the end of Gardens of the Sun till Evening's Empires appears only in this one) and the ending is also local with an 'we are watching with interest the big picture thingy", and again the development from that - The Bright Moment - powers this book and we find it out only here, but as a novel In the Mouth of the Whale works better

Overall, Evening's empires is true new space opera (or at least Solar System such), full of sense of wonder, original and diverse worlds, worldlets, people, great links to the past, superb speculation and while as a novel it would have worked better with only the first five parts and a short epilogue rather than a sixth part as a drawn out epilogue, it is still an impressive achievement

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a joy this was to read. Each of The Quiet War books have been quite different, and Evening's Empires is no exception. This is a baroque space opera adventure full of intrigue, wondrous tech and the mysteries of the inner and outer solar system. Plus there is such an element of whimsy: "This is an age of superstition and wishful thinking. The sky is full of evening's empires, and every one of them is founded on sand". A beautiful and intoxicating cornocupia of SF richness and wonder. One of the best genre novels I have read so far this year.

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evening's Empires is very different from the first 2 books of the series (The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun), especially regarding the setting that feels very post-apocalyptic and medieval, and the structure that follows only one main character. Still it is an immensely enjoyable read, full of sense-of-wonder, fascinating concepts and a good conclusion to the Quiet War series.

[Catherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was my first ever Paul J. McAuley book and I must say it left me feeling kind of confused. Wait. Not kind of. Very.

Superficially at least, this book is about a young man on a Voyage of Discovery and Revenge and Heroics, as he goes to save/revenge his killed/kidnapped family while learning to stand on his own two feet.
Deeper down this book is about two contrasting religions, of which neither side is afraid to use force in order to prove their religion is the Right Religion. Or something.

At least I think that's what this book was about. While the story of a young man on a Journey of Adventure (and stuff) in a futuristic society is interesting enough, the vocabulary used to describe many of the tools/background characters etc. was for the most part completely unfamiliar to me. In some ways it was if the author decided to use as many esoteric words as he possibly could - to show off his smarts? Or perhaps he has created a new language that was introduced earlier in this sequence of books? I have no idea, except it's plain that he likes his 10-dollar words.

Apart from the idiosyncratic and possibly even pretentious language used in this book, I found myself getting annoyed by the main character. He's so Heroic, so Noble, it made me shout at the pages. Honestly, if a secret religious sect of assassins were trying to kill me (for reasons I still don't quite follow), the very last thing I would do is find and go to their secret base to try and negotiate ... something? Especially if the other not-so-secret religious sect was also trying to kill me and were chasing me.

Nope, this book was definitely not to my liking.

[Chumofchance · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is my jam.

I've read the first three books in McAuley's Quiet War series, all of which I enjoyed and would recommend. Evening's Empire is by far the best of them, and even better you don't have to read the first three to enjoy it. Fans of Alastair Reynolds should take notice, McAuley shares much of his strengths (and occasional weaknesses), and has the same interest in credible but exotic far-future scenarios.

The story is your standard picaresque, not a bad thing because the story sweeps you right along. The setting is the main draw, a fading collection of city-states and decadent cultures among the ruins of the Solar System. I enjoyed the author's ability to create credible religions as part of the backdrop, many of them are cargo cults and there is a note of cynicism in some of the depictions. Still, McAuley respects that religion is part of the human experience, unlike many SF authors he's willing to examine it earnestly.

The other thing I appreciated is that McAuley's characters actually appeal to me. There are some really compelling characters here. I'm not saying earlier characters in the series didn't appeal to me, but he's clearly grown in this area. Even Hari, the typical 'questing youth' protagonist, is interesting, if not terribly complex.

Read it if you like space opera, hard SF, planetary romance, or other related genres. There's a lot of deep stuff here about growth, evolution, spirituality, and life the universe and everything.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh I do enjoy taking a trip around Paul McAuley's future solar system, chasing secrets and technological maguffins and odd sub-cultures in odder places, pursued by assassins and cultists and the past in a quest for the future. Our hero is Hari, marooned after his ship is boarded and his family is killed or captured. He escapes with the head of a scientist locked full of knowledge, and lots of people are after it while Hari himself wants to find what, if anything is left of his family and gain some measure of revenge.

McAuley's writing is crisp and cool and his portrait of the solar system, inhabited but moribund after the fall of an Empire and the rise of millennial cults, with is asteroid garden full of vacuum flowers and moons and habitats and a thawing Earth is fascinating, while Hari's questturns out to be less about revenge and more about getting free of the past.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In “Evening’s Empires”, Paul McCauley demonstrates that not matter how weird the solar system may become in the future, certain truths like, it can be ill advised to try and follow in your father’s footsteps, still hold true. There was a good deal I liked about this book. McCauley has built an imaginative and plausible future history for humankind (and post humankind). There are no aliens, instead the weird is us and we are the weird. Unfortunately a fantastic setting and a bunch of great ideas don’t always add up to a gripping read and I found parts of “Evening’s Empires” a bit plodding. McCauley is a very measured writer and his books have an evenness about them that leave me wanting a few more thrills to go along with the interesting ideas.

[MadProfessah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really about 3.5 stars. The main character, Hari Pilot, is quite compelling. The plot is intricate and there are numerous twists of fate. This is Book 4 in a series that starts with The Quiet War and it's fun to see echoes of characters and events from earlier books appear in this book.

[Liam Proven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very much. I'd go so far as to say it's the best of the four books of the Quiet War series. It has the simplest, most linear storytelling, with a single primary protagonist. The setting is complex and not that close to those of the previous novels, as it happens after the previous novel -- and that was set multiple light-years away in the Fomalhaut system. So with the lightspeed lag, it is centuries later than anything we've encountered in the story before.

The characters travel around much of the system, visiting a wide variety of cultures and settings, distantly descended from those we met in earlier novels. There's no continuity of characters or plot, but I don't think it would stand alone without great difficulty.

There are multiple playful callbacks to various classic SF titles, places and so on, but none are really important to the plot -- unless I missed something, which is entirely possible. They seem to be just thrown in as fan service, something far rarer in literary SF than in comics or other media. It's a welcome touch.

While this is an enjoyable novel in its own right, don't come to it looking for conclusions or satisfying wrapping up of the Quiet War sequence. It isn't. In fact I'd not call it the QW sequence, as there isn't much sequence. It is four connected novels, whose timelines are subsequent to one another and which share a lot of setting and a few characters, and not a lot more. There's no real over-arching plot here, and so no conclusions to be found in this installment.

I'd summarise book 1 as being an interesting setup of an idyllic future, ruined by all-too-human failings. Book 2 is people reassembling life in the wreckage. Book 3 is very far away in time and in distance, and gives a slice of life in one human colony in another star system, one that isn't trying to be especially plausible or predictive, but more extrapolative: it's just looking at some possibilities. I particularly liked the notion that the colonists have no single earthlike planet to occupy -- there's a gas giant but it's somewhat peripheral. I've not seen that since Niven's /The Smoke Ring/ and /The Integral Trees./

This book is back in the home system, but mainly far out not in the inner system. It is fascinating to see McAuley extrapolate what might become of his own setup; I feel that this was not planned out in advance.

I don't want to give away any plot as it is perhaps the simplest and most straightforward of them all, and I found the central characters sympathetic and interesting, quite complex and flawed but believable, even in their drives and goals. It doesn't give in to some obvious expectations; there was very little that happened in this book that I saw coming.

I wonder if this is because of some events in the author's private life that I was vaguely aware of. During the writing of this novel, he was suffering from cancer, which has, as I understand it, been successfully treated. I hope that he has many years of health ahead of him -- he certainly looks far healthier of late -- and he mentions his doctors and family in his postscript. I can't help but speculate how these highs and lows affected his writing process.

Read the whole tetralogy. McAuley is still growing and developing as a novelist, and it's a joy to behold.

[Michael Whiteman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the fourth entry in the Quiet War series and it jumps even further forward from the time of the original story than the last book, In The Mouth Of The Whale, did.

The focus is on Gajananvihari Pilot, and his quest for revenge after his family's ship is hijacked and the rest of his family killed. Hari escaped with the head of Dr Gagarian, which contains the information the doctor and Hari's father were researching and which the hijackers were trying to steal.

The quest itself is a planet-hopping series of kidnappings and escapes (I lost count of how many times Hari leaves an area via being drugged and taken prisoner) across a galaxy much-faded since the earlier books. Religions flourish and people in general are content to use technology they do not understand and develop it no further.

This all plays into the main themes of the book, which appear to be both an homage to "classic" science fiction stories and styles and also a critique of artists retreading well-worn ground instead of trying to produce something new. Both are blurred somewhat and it is unclear whether McAuley is really attacking the old stories or just people re-using the same ideas - the fact that the plot here is very old-fashioned itself just confuses things further. Perhaps he is venerating the old classics and just gently mocking himself for following their blueprint.

McAuley's writing is as dense as in the rest of the series, making it a bit of a slog sometimes, and the plot and action aren't as engaging as in The Mouth Of The Whale for example, but there is still plenty of interest. Particularly towards the end, when the commentary on SF stories as an art becomes more highlighted, I became more interested in the characters' choices as they related to older stories and tropes, rather than an adventure story of their own.

It is an odd way to close a four-book series, with a reflection on the state of the art only loosely connected to the preceding volumes, but ultimately I think it works, without significantly transcending the form.

[Ken Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

"This is an age of superstition and wishful thinking. The sky is full of evening's empires, and every one of them is founded on sand"

Paul McAuley's 'Quiet War' sequence comes to a close with this uneven quest caper, where protagonist Hari has been stripped of everything he knows and loves, escaping with his life, a smart spacesuit, and the head of the scientist whose research was the reason for a deadly raid and hijack of his scavenger family's spaceship and the apparent murder most of his relatives.

Hari is seriously pissed, and is out for revenge. He needs to discover what is in the ex-scientists head, what it has to do with the 'Bright Moment' which years (see 'The Mouth of the Whale') before had denoted the apotheosis of gene wizard Sri Hong Owen.

He wants his family's home back, and he wants to make the raiders pay. If only he knew just who they were. The caper takes the reader through a gorgeously imagined future solar system of worldlets, floating gardens, weather mechanics and exotically tweaked versions of humanity. Many of them of course, cannot be trusted, or can be trusted only just so far.

This is a paean of homage to the old Space Opera, with McAuley's trademark elegeic reflection of things which were once so wonderful and are now lost and diminished. There are nods to classic old tales of the solar system in the titles of the various sections - 'Childhood's End', 'Marooned off Vesta', 'The Caves of Steel', 'Pirates of the Asteroids', The Cold Equations' and 'Downward to the Earth' should be familiar to all fans of the genre.

I rather think that the book did not quite stick the landing, but rather like the eponymous empires of the title, slowly sink into the sand, leaving us having enjoyed the journey, but not quite sure why.

[Eldon Letkeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This is an age of superstition and wishful thinking. The sky is full of evenings empire's, and every one of them is founded on sand."

I'm of the belief that science fiction authors are our modern day prophets, declaring what the future holds, either good or bad. Paul McAuley is such an individual and Evening's Empires is his tome. Set in a far distant future where humanity exists on the coat tails of past scientific achievement, a young man, Hari, is caught up in a
story of violence, death and betrayal. His family is gone and he is on the run with vital information about the mysteries of the universe, all trapped inside the severed head of a scientist. However, all around him, religious cults want to use it for their purposes, raising superstitious dogmatic interpretations of science to religious-like levels. It's the Tower of Babel all over again, declaring that we can be gods. All Hari wants is answers, a little revenge and ultimately some peace and quiet.

What is so remarkable of Evening's Empires is that in our current age of pop-sci and fashionable nerdism, we have an author in Mr. McAuley who is willing to go back to the roots of hard science fiction, crafting a universe and future that is very believable, all while anchoring it in some of the fundamental issues of our current time: the loss of scientific inquiry and the rise of narrow-minded dogma. While I love new and trendy sci-fi works, exploring
uncharted territory in the human condition, I think there is so much richness in returning to our roots of science fiction, seeing humanity out there in the darkness of the future, fending for itself, finding its place. I would say that Paul McAuley is on par with Frank Herbert or Isaac Asimov, asking the question: "What does it mean to be human?" This was a book that I am pleased to have added to my collection, both on the shelf and in my mind.

[David Raz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed with this book, and as always, disappointment is a function of expectations. After a disappointing second book and a promising third, I was expecting more.

Starting with the good side, the story is dynamic and the characters are rich and engaging, something which was missing from the second book and was found in the third. Like all books in the series, McAuley's imagination never seizes to amaze. For novelty and futurism, this is hardcore SciFi at its best. However, several things were missing.

The worst part of this book is the last section (quarter or fifth of the book), where the book just fizzles to nothing. It felt like another author wrote this section, or maybe like a bad draft. Since I was expecting some resolution to the entire series, it was even more disappointing. Was there a deadline that had to be met? Did the author get bored with the series? I'm not sure, but this is no way to end this book, not to speak of the series. Another thing I didn't like is that I'm not sure if the message "never trust your family" is one which I subscribe to. At some points it felt like the author is pushing this too far.

Still, this is not a bad book, and if you read the series this far, you will probably want to read it. I wish a better end to this series, but this is what we get, 3.5 stars out of five, and I'll round to 3, just because I wanted much more from this book.

[Olaf Funke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Puhh, so erleichtert war ich schon lang nicht mehr, ein Buch zuzuklappen.
Für schlappe 374 Seiten hat sich das Buch entsetzlich lang gezogen und ich hab drei Wochen dafür gebraucht. In der Zeit schaffe ich normal ein doppelt so dickes Werk.
Das Hauptproblem ist, daß der Autor extrem verliebt ist in die Welt die er sich ausgedacht hat und einem seitenlang Hintergundinformationen um die Ohren haut, die aber die Handlung selber nicht weiter bringen. Die Informationen sind toll und unheimlich interessant, keine Frage, werden aber auf eine so uninteressante Art und Weise herübergebracht, daß ich beim Lesen ständig abgedriftet bin und Probleme hatte, den den Wiedereinstieg zu finden, da ich nicht mehr wusste, wo ich gerade war.
Witzigerweise hat McAuley gegn Ende ein Zitat gebracht, daß meine Meinung übder dieses Buch perfekt zusammenfasst:
"He tried to read in his book, a long story about a young man trying to escape a vast, ancient, populous city, but the words and sentences wouldn't stay put. He'd look away for a moment, distracted by some stray thought, and discover that he'd lost his place. He'd find himself reading the same paragraph or line for the second or third time."

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

What it's about: In a far-future Solar System recently ravaged by the actions of unknowable alien intelligences, a resourceful young scavenger seeks revenge against the agents that killed his family.

Verdict: Again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, the worldbuilding in Evening's Empires is excellent, positing a Solar System in decline after a cataclysmic affair and rocked by religious awakening after a bizarre cosmic event called the Bright Moment. But its plot is a meandering, directionless mess with meh-at-best characters, odd plot trajectories, and a conclusion that falls flat after the expectations that have been built up around it in the form of the esoteric mysteries that McAuley has posited as part of his future history. As a work of fiction, it serves as the barest of threads to string together McAuley's otherwise intriguingly imaginative world together.

I give this book: 3 out of 5 Dr Gagarian heads

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

A poor addition to the previous books (The Quiet War, Gardens of the Sun). The story is just some intrigue, a bunch of chases, and no resolution to the overlying plot. The characters are rich but it’s not an excuse to the lame ending and the way the book fizzles out at the end.

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful book about the past and the truth and how they might matter.
But set in one of McAuley's futures, very detailed and consistent.
This is the 4th (?) in a series, but stand alone quite well.
Enjoy!

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really struggled with Evening's Empires. I could not get into it and found it really dragging.

[Debby Kean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty weird, actually pretty good!

[Nick Ray · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring, DNF. Sibling tries to avenge family death by travelling around solar system habitats. Gagarian's Head

[Tom the Guvnor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tend to agree that the book is high action awe and wonder but then fades into ennui at the end. It still works but I felt disappointed, like Hari.

[Barondestructo · Rating 3 out of 5]

“In the far future, a young man stands on a barren asteroid. His ship has been stolen, his family kidnapped or worse, and all he has on his side is a semi-intelligent spacesuit. The only member of the crew to escape, Hari has barely been off his ship before. It was his birthplace, his home and his future. He’s going to get it back. “

It certainly sounds like a focused, revenge-fueled romp but, in reality, Evening’s Empires is actually a sweeping, cerebral tale of betrayal, vengeance, and, surprisingly, family. It’s an ambitious and intelligent novel that is both hard SF and space opera although, to be perfectly honest, it took a while for the story to really capture my interest. For the first fifty pages or so, I was utterly baffled, even frustrated, by the overwhelming denseness of the shifting social landscapes and political and religious paradigms.

The book is incredibly rich in its grand scope world galaxy-building and much of the background history, established and developed in the author’s previous books, can be incredibly confusing for the uninitiated. I had to double (and triple) check that Evening’s Empires was, in fact, a standalone novel that didn’t require any knowledge of McAuley’s other works. The various backstory elements are eventually explained, a little too often in the form of mass conversational info dumps but, once I finally had a better understanding of its foundations, the novel became a far more enjoyable read. Still, partway through, when I came across the line “It’s a maze he lost himself in.” I couldn’t help think “There but for the Grace of God went I”.

At the heart of this book is the mystery of “the bright moment”, a simultaneously shared vision, glimpsed by everyone in the solar system, of a man on a bicycle. Our hero, Hari, is raised on a spaceship where his family plays host to a scientist studying “the bright moment”. Then, one day, their ship is hijacked and Hari is forced to flee – with the scientist’s head and the valuable data it contains. Hari plots to retake his ship but, to do so, he must connect with people from his past and peel the onion on a multi-layered mystery involving religious fanatics, shifting alliances, and dangerous clones.

It all makes for a head-spinning tour-de-force that, I suspect, will leave many readers thoroughly amazed by the novel’s depth and breadth while, simultaneously, leaving just as many thoroughly bewildered.

As an added bonus for the well-read SF fan, the book is divided into six parts titled: Childhood’s End, Marooned Off Vespa, The Caves of Steel, Pirates of the Asteroids, The Cold Equations, and Downward to the Earth. I’m not sure if there was more to it than a simple tip of the hat to the golden age classics, but there’s no denying Evening’s Empire has far more in common with the narratively expansive and challenging works of Alastair Reynolds and Iain M. Banks than it does the works of Clarke, Asimov, and Silverberg.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very good book, and a fitting end to the Quiet War stories. McAuley may not intend for the book to be the last he writes in his Quiet War universe, but the story in this book provides a relatively satisfying closure to the broad narrative started many books ago with the Quiet War. I would welcome another Quiet War book with open arms and eager, ready-to-read eyes (probably purchasing it as soon as it became available in the U.S. -- these books don't seem to stay in print here for very long). But if there are no more Quiet War novels, I will still be happy with this series.

In this book, we get a very focused, personal story -- a coming-of-age story, really -- and explores not only very personal themes of family, trust, love (both familial and romantic), and maturity, but also truly epic themes of apathy, the decline of society, the necessity for freedom of information, the decay caused by perennial profit-seeking, and the evils of anarchy.

On top of all of that, McAuley takes full advantage of the narrative opportunities available in a story set in a post-human society in decline. McAuley has created some of his most memorable characters and placed them in the most creative and unique settings of his series. For example: a hollowed out asteroid that used to spin to create gravity on its interior surface, but was suddenly stopped decades ago, destroying the interior structures, and now housing a free-for-all market-place where nearly anything can be bought and sold.

[Terence · Rating 2 out of 5]

Paul McAuley is a member of that stable of hard SF authors who I like to read. I don’t follow him attentively but when opportunity presents itself, I do not hesitate overmuch to pick up one of his novels. I read The Quiet War a few years back and enjoyed it well enough. Evening’s Empires returns to that future history a couple of millennia after the events in the first novel. [With two intervening books that I haven’t read. Fortunately, at least in this instance, one doesn’t need to have read those intervening books, or even The Quiet War, to enjoy this one.]

As other reviewers have noted, this is a Hero’s Quest about a young man whose family is murdered and he must take revenge and discover why. It’s an enjoyable if not memorable space opera and if you’re already a McAuley fan, you’ll probably like this book. If you’re a hard SF aficionado but have never read McAuley, you’ll also like this book.

[Stephen Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the chase that works across the Belt, out to Saturn and then ultimately back to Earth, a quieter book than the preceding. It stands alone reasonably well; there is more to the book if you have read In the Mouth of the Whale along with The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun.

[Peter Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a sad little tale of petty misunderstanding, religious hysteria and vendetta. At what feels like a slow unravelling of the promise of an unlimited future, a young man is family is slaughtered, their cargo ship stolen and he barely escapes to a tiny bubble habitat on an abandoned her it's asteroid.

Everything is breaking down, scholarship, competence, rationality, economics. The main trade seems to be cannibalising left over machinery from the golden age, cults abound, research is now conducted by a handful of eccentric recluses desperate for patrons.

There's a very clever meta plot about what sort of story the characters find themselves in - is it heroic or banal?

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hard science fiction novel that reads like a space opera. I don't like to say any novel is 'comparable' or 'like' another novel or author because that is more like a put down. I will say if you put Ben Bova's Grand Tour books in a blender with Bruce Sterling's Schimatrix you might get a close approximation but Paul McCauley has a style all his own.

My dad gave me this book on my last visit. It became my vacation read. It only took me a week because I couldn't put it down. It was only after completing it that I discovered it was the fourth book in a cycle. It can be read as a stand alone novel but I will now circle back to the first and start from the beginning.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were wonderful moments in this 4th book of the Quiet War series, along with many silly religions (just as boring in fiction as in real life) and linear plotting. The one hope I had for redemption was missed, and the winding down ending of the book was like a failed dessert course in a rather bland meal. Sadly.

Not sure I should read any more McAuley at all now. Perhaps the 3 stories in In the Mouth of the Whale? What do you think?

[Adrian Leaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in a slightly decadent and decayed far future where innovation and progress has stalled. Disaster happens and a chase/mystery ensues with the main character dragged along in events he doesn't understand, Family secrets are revealed and in the process he tries to understand himself.

[Mike Macon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the "Quiet War" books, and each just seems to get better than the previous. Evening's Empires was hands-down one of the best speculative hard sci-fi novels I've ever read. Twelve thumbs up.