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House of Suns

Alastair Reynolds

4.21 · Rating details · 22,118 ratings · 1,161 reviews

Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every two hundred thousand years, to exchange news and memories of their travels with ...more

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Paperback, 502 pages

Published March 12th 2009 by Gollancz (first published April 17th 2008)

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Mar 07, 2018 Mario the lone bookwolf rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reynolds-alastair

Clone family meeting galactically gone wrong.

One of Reynolds´single novels, it deals with immortality, childhood trauma through alternative upbringing involving simulations and AIs, an option how conglomerates could evolve, machine intelligence in the form of old and new robots, a crime in the past, future torture methods, and thereby unites anything that makes Sci-Fi great.

Childhood memories have already played an essential role in Chasm City, where it was part of showing the special attitude a Clone family meeting galactically gone wrong.

One of Reynolds´single novels, it deals with immortality, childhood trauma through alternative upbringing involving simulations and AIs, an option how conglomerates could evolve, machine intelligence in the form of old and new robots, a crime in the past, future torture methods, and thereby unites anything that makes Sci-Fi great.

Childhood memories have already played an essential role in Chasm City, where it was part of showing the special attitude and shock frosted living cargo weight minimization attempts of Sky Hausmann. In this case, simulations, AI, agents, and upbringing optimization could be influenced by one, to avoid spoiler, of the offered options: hacking, secret use, AI gone sentient, agent gone mad, etc. However, the possibilities are manifold, but there seems to be not much difference between being brought up by mad, flesh parents or wacky artificial teachers.

The element of upbringing with partial or total help of AI is already a bit of a controversial topic nowadays, especially because it includes dismantling and depreciating motherhood just as any other aspect of human uniqueness and ingenuity because, sorry for that sad truth, machines and AI are already better in some fields and there is no reason why they shouldn´t outstrip humans in every possible aspect. It´s sick and disturbing, but if a perfect android could, in a few centuries or millennia, teach, rear, and educate babies and kids with perfection humans are incapable of (no 24/7, jobs, mood fluctuation, no technology to detect any emotion, bodily function of the kid, etc.) the naturally upbrought kids would always fail in comparison. But hey, if the cyborgs look exactly like the parents, they could assist them and the important bonding and conditioning on certain faces is still there, so where could be a problem? Hopeless romantics should learn to deal with that sooner or later.

How to explore space is a question of money, private or public sponsoring, the motivation of colonization, war, research, asteroid mining aka resources (much easier than mining on planets), or good, oldfashioned discovery addiction, although that´s a rare anomaly.

These aren´t rare too and Reynolds plays his astrophysics profession card more wisely and less hardcore than in the Revelation Space series, making it easier to follow, more focused on the great and heavily interwoven plot, so be focused while reading not to oversee the premises because Reynolds likes to puzzle with tiny pieces and each knows it´s place. And there is an old crime, a new crime, a mysterious old alien civilization, machine people, the spirit of the air, childhood trauma, epic boss battles, and Reynolds trademark badass character attitudes, cool dialogues, everything.

The technology is far higher developed, duh, as a few million years have passed since today, but Reynolds is still focusing on technical and physical accuracy, making the theoretical machines, engines, and weapons as science based and related to theoretical physics as possible.

Bio- and nanotechnology and its possible uses, misuses, and funny accidents with it are a recurring theme in his work, Melding plague, Greenfly, abilities of machines, etc, and one of the most fascinating aspects of Sci-Fi, be it in worldbuilding, abilities, or the effects on protagonists if they more or less willingly transform. Just take real life examples from biology, viruses, intelligence in insect colonies,… or technology, viruses again, microscopic robots,... Again a question of when, not if.

Some readers may definitively be disappointed because it´s still very detailed and filled with science facts, characterization, dialogues, and whatever protagonist keen readers are into is secondary after the worldbuilding, fractions, retrospections, and especially the families and the idea of how wealth could keep accumulating in space. (view spoiler)but I would subjectively think that conglomerates and especially single, market listed megacorporations that are the first ones and have extremely rigid and deadly anti industrial espionage systems will be king. These strange entities are already almighty powers on earth and the greed of their founders will lead to speculation and stocks, taking away the power from the founding mothers and fathers and giving it to the uncontrollable market. I guess future aliens will have much fun playing around with the most important factor of human society just as nowadays secret reptilian overlords that are already there.

The novel is one of the best entry points to Reynold´s amazing work, because it has at least 10 unforgettable moments, is, as mentioned, not as complex and interwoven as his other works (and there are no flaws in character´s motivations and motives), and deals with a pretty fresh and unused plot idea I´ve still not seen in such detail.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph... ...more

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Nov 10, 2017 Kevin Kelsey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-it-again, read-2017

Posted at Heradas Review

This is my first Alastair Reynolds standalone novel. Having previously absorbed everything remotely related to his Revelation Space series over the last few years, I wanted to dip my toes into some of his one-off writing before digging into his newer series work. For some reason this book has been out of print in the US for a few years, making a physical copy a little tedious to come by, but I did eventually find one. Come on ACE, it’s time for a reprint!

Coming from the R Posted at Heradas Review

This is my first Alastair Reynolds standalone novel. Having previously absorbed everything remotely related to his Revelation Space series over the last few years, I wanted to dip my toes into some of his one-off writing before digging into his newer series work. For some reason this book has been out of print in the US for a few years, making a physical copy a little tedious to come by, but I did eventually find one. Come on ACE, it’s time for a reprint!

Coming from the RS camp, I was surprised with the linearity of this story. The whole thing is written in first person, with two main point of view characters in alternating chapters. Every 6-7 chapters brings a flashback interjection that slowly reveals details and moves everything forward. I suppose adding unnecessary linear complexity to a story that already has so many strange new concepts in it, might’ve been overkill on the reader. As a result, the story flows nicely and was easier to follow than Revelation Space. I’d say this would be a terrific jumping in point if you were interested in checking out Reynolds’ work.

House of Suns is epic in every way the word can be defined. The scale of some of the conceptual elements was so broad that I initially had some difficulty finding a handhold to comprehend them. I felt like it stretched my mind a little bit just reaching for a way to relate. The best Science Fiction always does this for me in some way. It exists in that sweet spot directly between what you currently understand, and what you are capable of understanding. The best stories can be a linchpin, connecting you to your future, slightly more experienced self. I suppose this is true of all fiction, but I find it particularly so with the genres of Speculative Fiction, which are after all, more interested in investigating the “other” than fiction firmly rooted in the realm of realism often is.

The amount of mind-bending concepts Reynolds managed to pack into this novel while maintaining a coherent story is impressive: Star dams, ring worlds, causality, time dilation, artificial intelligence, solar system relocation, ancient technology, the nature of memory, longevity, cloning, wormholes, civilizational “turnover”, etc. It’s simply exploding with these huge ideas, but the story is never sacrificed in favor of them. It churns along, always moving forward.

Reynolds occasionally gets some slack for his character development or lack thereof, each character’s voice tending to just be the author’s voice, etc. So, when I realized that most of the characters in House of Suns were literal clones of the same character, I rolled my eyes a little and thought “Well, I guess that’s one way to get around the criticism.” But, it actually worked very well here.

These clone characters are “shatterlings” with indefinitely long lifespans that have drifted from their source individual, and each other, for 6 million years (epic scale!) and are essentially unique individuals as a result of their differing life experiences. Because they are clones, instead of noticing their similarities, you’re drawn toward their differences. The ways in which they are similar just reinforce the fact that they started from a near identical point. It’s a brilliant way to reframe the reader’s perception regarding character work without actually changing the writer’s approach to characterization. It feels very self-aware, and it’s clever as hell. It’s almost like he’s acknowledging his critics, but saying “See, it’s not necessarily bad, it’s just how you look at it”. Personally, the character work in Reynolds’ books has never bothered me, but if it bothered you, I think you’ll find this one has a refreshingly different take.

The story concludes satisfactorily, but leaves some things open for more. I would absolutely love another novel set in this universe, and the point at which this novel arrives could be seen as a great widening of that universe’s potential scope. It’s ripe for more tales, and I hope we get them. Reynolds has said: “I would like to return to this universe but I have no fixed plans for when that will happen.” Fingers crossed that those plans will materialize soon! ...more

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Jan 27, 2011 Felicia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Words can't describe how much I love this book! The quality of the writing in the first chapter gripped me and wouldnt let me stop reading. It is a fabulous scifi space opera with fantastic characters you root for. The most impressive thing is the world building, and how the complex science becomes understandable and readable in a way that you don't normally find in these types of books.
Between discovering Reynolds and Banks, I feel like I'm in my own scifi novel Renaissance! ...more

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Jan 03, 2020 carol. rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: meh, i-am-not-a-robot, sci-fi

Surprisingly uninteresting.

(Un)profound thoughts on genre: every genre has its icons, and Reynolds seems to be one of science fiction's favorites, with at least sixteen books and many, many, more shorts and novellas. With a PhD in astrophysics, he even has the professional cred in science. But can he write?

The Dan 2.Ω and carol. jury is still out on that one. I can tell you that he is in desperate need of editing.

I've been finding myself asking, are genre icons too big to fail? Everyone in-gen ...more

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Feb 26, 2016 Cecily rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-future-speculative-fict, unreliable-narrators

NEW Review, Written After Reading

Comment #25 onwards was made after adding this section.

Good old-fashioned futuristic adventure at its best. Intelligent, well-written escapism about encounters between advanced human intelligences and even more advanced machine intelligences.

Reynolds often writes novels with three-strands, set in different worlds and eons, that gradually come together. This is a simpler, single, story, but it's epic in time and distance. There is adventure, love and loyalty, atta ...more

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Sep 15, 2011 Apatt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-top-20, favorites

"I had already seen dozens of empires come and go, blossoming and fading like lilies on a pond, over and over, seasons without end. Many of those empires were benevolent and welcoming, but others were inimical to all outside influences. It made no difference to their longevity. The kind empires withered and waned as quickly as the hostile ones."

Epic!

The above passage from House of Suns serves to illustrate the author's grandiose scheme for this book. The story spans millions of years a

"I had already seen dozens of empires come and go, blossoming and fading like lilies on a pond, over and over, seasons without end. Many of those empires were benevolent and welcoming, but others were inimical to all outside influences. It made no difference to their longevity. The kind empires withered and waned as quickly as the hostile ones."

Epic!

The above passage from House of Suns serves to illustrate the author's grandiose scheme for this book. The story spans millions of years and hundreds of them often pass in the blink of an eye. Talk about fast moving narrative, this book almost break the FTL barrier. That said the story is not hard to follow providing you give it time to unfold and settle you in its very far future settings. In spite of the grand scale, there are not that many characters to keep track of. The first person narrative is split into that of three protagonists, actually only one protagonist in a way. It all starts with this one girl Abigail Gentian who grew up in a weird shape shifting house and later cloned herself a thousand (+/-1) times for space exploration purposes. These thousand clones meet up every thousand years or so to celebrate, compare notes and basically, party like it's 1999 (+ many kilo centuries). On one such occasion, they are attacked and almost wiped out...

My inadequate synopsis barely scratches the surface of the immense story. This is my second Alastair Reynolds book, the first being Revelation Space which is his debut novel published 8 years before House of Suns. I rather like Revelation Space but in a muted sort of way, I thought the characters were on the flat side and a lot of the science went over my head. Well, I am glad to report that in the intervening years (while I was in suspended animation) Mr. Reynolds has acquired the arcane skills of character development. The central characters are likable and believable and the robot characters are just wonderful. While some of the science still goes whoosh! right over my head, this is to be expected as I have difficulty figuring out how dental floss works. That said, most of the science and inventions are explained quite clearly and still comes across as ingenious.

Interestingly some very odd beings appear in this book but none of them are aliens. Which brings me to another quote from the book:

"Yes, humanity fractured into a million daughter species, some of which were scarcely recognisable to each other. But scratch beneath the scales, the fur, the tin armour, they were still humans at the core, and no amount of primate babble could ever drown out that silence completely."

TL;DR: No aliens! All the weird blighters that show up in this book are post-humans, though a mysterious alien race is referred to they never actually drop by at any point. The post-humans weirdos more than make up for them, though.

There are mercifully brief fantasy interludes (inside a virtual reality) which I don't really care for, it reminds of scenes from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer which did not appeal to me (the scenes, not the book). This book could also do with a bit more humour and levity, but the poignant finale tugs nicely at the heartstrings.

I really should stop rating books at five stars or I shall have no credibility left. I don't want to be the Paula Abdul of Goodreads or something, but really at the end of the day this is a great mind expanding read and to rate it less than five stars seems churlish. I think I will rate the next book I review at 4 stars max, regardless of how good it is! ...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Forrest rated it it was amazing

Others have covered the plotline and central conceits of the novel very well, so I will forbear. The plot is excellent, as are the ideas. What sets House of Suns far apart from other space operas is the sheer scope and scale of the thing and the fact that the immensity of it all does not drown the beautiful humanity displayed by the main characters, Campion and Purslane, two clones of the Gentian line who have been illicitly involved in a forbidden relationship with one another.

When I was a kid, Others have covered the plotline and central conceits of the novel very well, so I will forbear. The plot is excellent, as are the ideas. What sets House of Suns far apart from other space operas is the sheer scope and scale of the thing and the fact that the immensity of it all does not drown the beautiful humanity displayed by the main characters, Campion and Purslane, two clones of the Gentian line who have been illicitly involved in a forbidden relationship with one another.

When I was a kid, I was a big fan of the game Traveller (I still am . . . a kid and a fan). One of the constraints of the game was that any given planet could have a "technology level" that indicated how far technology had advanced on that planet, whether from native growth or from outside colonists. The entries for very advanced tech levels were rather obtuse and never really given much detail as to how the technology worked or what it enabled. It was all extremely vague.

House of Suns posits, in the beginning, technology beyond many of the most forward thinkers' wildest imaginations. His science is very clear (he is, by training, an astrophysicist) and well-justified, and he clearly articulates concepts and technologies where other writers resort to hand-waving. In the end, though, Reynolds makes it clear that he has only scratched the surface.

I'm also familiar with relativity and am fairly comfortable, as a historian, with the concept of "Longue Duree" history. Time is vast, more vast than we can comprehend. And faced with concepts and events that span long stretches of millennia, the human mind tends to withdraw, to recoil, at the mere thought of too much time.

Reynolds somehow, and I'm not entirely sure how, eases the reader into the comfort zone where years pass in a sentence, and the reader doesn't feel that anything was missed. He also guides the reader to understand the immense timescales that these characters deal with (many of them are millions of years old) without being boring or redundant. Yes, some of this is done with the technology of stasis cabinets and "Synchromesh," a time-altering drug that allows the subject to speed up or slow down their mind and body to match another who is phased out of "real" time. But these technologies are not abused by the writer, and they make perfect sense, given their use in various situations. No, Reynolds, because he is so excellent at pacing the novel, makes it feel perfectly reasonable that, for example, a deep-space chase scene should take thousands of years or that a character can live for millions of years without becoming cosmically bored out of her skull.

Partly, he does this by helping the reader connect to the human feelings that his characters feel, which would be similar regardless of how long one had been around or how far the future extended ahead of them. This conversation between Purslane (the narrator, at this point) and her companion Campion, is telling:

After a silence, Campion said, "You know what I keep coming back to? We'd never have visited this world unless something bad had happened to us. Never have heard those singing sands, seen this beautiful city . . .We might have travelled here eventually, I know, but it wouldn't be Neume the way it is now. We'd probably be seeing it half a dozen civilisations down the line, when the Ymirians will just be a memory."

I drank the wine, wanting it to go to my head as quickly as possible. "If you're trying to see good in this, I'm not sure I'm quite ready to make that leap."

"I'm just saying . . . it's a strange universe. It can still surprise us. That's why it's worth carrying on, I suppose. If I felt that all we were doing was reliving a fixed set of experiences in different permutations-"

"That wouldn't be so bad, if those experiences were pleasant ones. Do you ever get tired of sunsets?"

"No," Campion said.

"Do you ever get tired of waterfalls, or beaches?"

"No."

"Then there's always hope for us."

This is the kind of human beauty anyone can relate to, in a relativistic way or otherwise. ...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Michael by: apatt

Shelves: artificial-intelligence, space-opera, fiction, science-fiction, space-exploration

I loved the hopefulness of this grand conception of humanity in the far future. I was surprised it worked so well for me as there is so much uncertainty about human survival on the near term that I figured speculation on a timescale would feel fairly meaningless. For example, I just couldn’t relate to the spiritual beings of Well’s “Time Machine”, the Eloi, and I was weirded out by the remnant human society clinging to a distant future existence in Benford’s “Great Sky River.” Here we have a lin I loved the hopefulness of this grand conception of humanity in the far future. I was surprised it worked so well for me as there is so much uncertainty about human survival on the near term that I figured speculation on a timescale would feel fairly meaningless. For example, I just couldn’t relate to the spiritual beings of Well’s “Time Machine”, the Eloi, and I was weirded out by the remnant human society clinging to a distant future existence in Benford’s “Great Sky River.” Here we have a line of humans still much like us who retain the sense of wonder and exploration that made Star Trek so popular. Exploring the many different forms that humans have evolved into over millions of years is a satisfactory part of the mission. Still the prospect of finding aliens is an unfulfilled hope:

Humans had resigned themselves to never having to share the galaxy with another species. That was both a blessing and a curse. It meant unlimited room for expansion, unlimited scope for raw materials, but it also meant enduring the deathliest of silences. Yes, humanity had fractured into a million daughter species, some of which were scarcely recognizable to each other. But scratch beneath the scales, the fur, the armor, they were still humans at the core, and no amount of primate babble could ever drown out that silence completely.

The story’s premise is of a thousand cloned people, the Gentian Line, traveling the galaxy in separate ships and getting back together periodically to share their memories and discoveries. Reynolds eases the barrier to plausibility by not resorting to faster-than-light travel and instead relying on “reasonable” technologies such as cryopreservation during long transits and methods for computer storage and sharing of memories. Given additional technologies for indefinite extension of lifespan, you have the basis for a compelling knowledge quest without escaping too far into fantasy land.

The narrative alternates between the childhood of the line’s founder Abigail Gentian, feeling trapped in her protected, lonely life in a solar civilization, and that of a pair of cloned siblings, Campion and Purslane, who are approaching a reunion event after a 100,000-year circuit, six million years from their launch. The latter are lovers, which violates the rules of the order. Despite the common memory starting out as Abigail, there is no sense of incest as the cloning process included rendering of diversity in biological form, gender, and personality. The grounding of this mind-blowing tale in the personal perspectives of these characters makes the novel sing for me. As with Dr. Zhivago clinging to love in the face of war, it was a relief for sharing of experience to retain a priority for our heroes:

To see something marvelous with your own eyes—that’s wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you’ll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold only have an incomplete half of it, and that it won’t ever really exist as a whole until you’re together, talking or thinking about that moment …that’s worth more than one plus one. It’s worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can’t even imagine it.

But the big plus in the tale for me is their friendship with a conscious robot of the “Machine People”, Hesperus, who was waylaid by a pirate. Like our heroes, he is interested in clues to the mystery of why the Andromeda galaxy now appears as a blank in the sky and what the recent gleanings from a race of human information archivists may shed on this ominous phenomenon. Soon their friendship with Hesperus is solidified in a struggle for survival. A devastating event prevents Campion and Purslane from participating in the reunion. They end up dealing with a big threat to their galaxy and a conspiracy within the Gentian Line. Reynolds renders us a rewarding intersection between human struggles with big issues that bear on the fate of our species, just the kind of story that makes me love space opera at its best.
...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Bradley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, space-opera, 2016-shelf

After reading some really awesome reviews from Cecily and Apatt, and despite the fact that I've already read ten of his novels and short story collections, I've been feeling quite ashamed that I still hadn't read this well-regarded novel. So I sat my butt down and made it my eleventh. :)

Could I possibly be disappointed at this point? Nope. At least, not for the sheer scale and scope of this post-humanity romp of over 6 million years, where a certain girl named Abigail clones herself and her mind After reading some really awesome reviews from Cecily and Apatt, and despite the fact that I've already read ten of his novels and short story collections, I've been feeling quite ashamed that I still hadn't read this well-regarded novel. So I sat my butt down and made it my eleventh. :)

Could I possibly be disappointed at this point? Nope. At least, not for the sheer scale and scope of this post-humanity romp of over 6 million years, where a certain girl named Abigail clones herself and her mind up to a certain date in her early adulthood for the purposes of colonizing space... and while she isn't the only one to have done this, she's certainly our MC 6 million years down the line, with all the little pieces of herself meeting every once in a while to share their wildly divergent pieces and sometimes throw a planetary-wide funeral (and I mean, literally, a projection the size of a whole planet to memorialize the dead,) or sometimes mess around with ringworld swarms or machine-intelligence genocide or causality loop breaking wormhole jaunts to Andromeda Galaxy, rather than just stomping around in the Milky-Way at sub-light speeds, which is rather the norm.

I did mention that this is post-humanity with the ability to copy and send out their minds, edit and delete huge swaths of memory, go into stasis or wildly different time-frame-references, either speeding up or slowing WAY down to make the sheer immensity of either time or space reasonable to a human, didn't I?

It's very fascinating, and the ideas hardly end there. In fact, Reynolds's vision of the deep future is both fascinating and full of actual story, too! We really don't deal with alien intelligences much unless you talk about the machine divergences from ourselves, but as in the other connected Space-Operas of his, there's always something bigger and greater on the sidelines just waiting for the smaller fish to swim by, and this is no different.

What about the First Machines from long before humanity? What about the Solar Dams that can reasonably halt a supernova indefinitely but still managed to break and wipe out a whole alien species? Who's at fault here? We've got mystery, deaths among the near-immortals, and huge questions regarding the sanctity of really, really long-term memory devices, and of course, the whole novel is charged with betrayal. But who's? The Shatterlings are, after all, based on relatively few people, and just who is at fault when they're all one?

Well, obviously, experience can change everyone, and after 6 million years, it's actually kind of funny that these people are still so fundamentally relatable to readers like us. :)

A lot of energy and ideas were thrown into this novel, and it's definitely worth reading if you're at all into really "serious" Space-Opera works of the deep future. :) In general, probably the best part is the fact that everything is basically based on real science and possibility, and yet it still manages to go wwwwaaaaaaayyyy out there in scope. :) That's my favorite part, anyway. :)

...more

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Apr 19, 2017 Stuart rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: galaxy-spanning, hard-sf, favorites

House of Suns: Truly epic time scales, but characters also shine
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
This is the first Alastair Reynolds’ book I’ve read not set in his REVELATION SPACE series, and many of his fans claim it’s his best book. I’d have to say it is pretty impressive, dealing with deep time scales rarely seen for any but the most epic hard SF books. What’s unique about House of Suns is not simply that the story spans hundreds of thousands of years, but that the characters actually ...more

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Apr 05, 2017 Mimi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017, space-opera, favorites, my-shelf, science-fiction

I meant to take it easy, but ended up blowing through the second half of this book in just 3 days. The pages just kept on turning by themselves, and I didn't get much sleep.

Woke up this morning and was like

But seriously. What year is it?

This is not a review because I don't have enough science in me to understand it or to begin diving in and deconstructing it, but I did enjoy it very much and it's easily one of the best books I've read this year, maybe even this millennium. Will have to return f ...more

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Aug 27, 2019 Manuel Antão rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

Dr. Strangelove in Colour: "House of Suns" by Alastair Reynolds

When I was in high-school in the 80's, a bunch of hippy drama students came in and told us we were going to travel through time. They took us into a tent which had been set up in the school hall and told us to close or eyes and concentrate for a minute. When that time was up, they took us out of the tent and started expressively wandering around the school hall, exclaiming ...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Guillermo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

When Barnes and Noble still only selled a hardcover version of this book a few years ago, I read the blurb on the inside cover and was like wtf? The story line seemed like too much even for me, and even after I was still giddy from plowing through the excellent Revelation Space series Reynolds is famous for. The idea of reading a bizarre story about cloned male and female "shatterlings" of a single person that travel in "circuits" around the galaxy (which last roughly, oh
about 200,000 years or ...more

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Nov 27, 2013 Mike rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, reviewed, space-opera

So one of the biggest constraints of the space opera genre is answering the question of faster than light (FTL) travel. Star Trek and the Star Carrier series gets around it using a modification of the Alcubierre Drive. The Old Man's War series mucks around with alternate universes. The Expanse does a fantastic job adapting the Space Opera genre to just the solar system, obviating the need for faster than light travel.

The House of Suns says screw it, we don't need no stinking FTL, and we're doing ...more

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Feb 23, 2018 Olivia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, favorites

Right after finishing, I declared this may be my favourite read, since I first came across Pride and Prejudice two decades ago, which means a lot, trust me. Don't worry though, this is NOTHING like Pride and Prejudice.

House of Suns is something special. Filled with wonders and surprises. A story spanning millions of years and several galaxies. It took me a few chapters to wrap my head around the world; it's a lot to take in at first. Afterwards, I couldn't put it down. I just ploughed through, s ...more

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Dec 08, 2019 William rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone and everyone

After reading House of Suns, I must resist the urge to just binge read everything Alistair Reynolds has ever written over, and over. There are other fantastic books, and authors out there. Al's writing, though, speaks to me. I'm not one of those people obsessed with comparisons, "THIS IS THE BEST EVUR!!!!", but I will say at this point in my life, Al is my favorite author.

Having read the short story "Thousandth Night" from "Beyond the Aquila Rift", I had a short introduction to the Gentian Line After reading House of Suns, I must resist the urge to just binge read everything Alistair Reynolds has ever written over, and over. There are other fantastic books, and authors out there. Al's writing, though, speaks to me. I'm not one of those people obsessed with comparisons, "THIS IS THE BEST EVUR!!!!", but I will say at this point in my life, Al is my favorite author.

Having read the short story "Thousandth Night" from "Beyond the Aquila Rift", I had a short introduction to the Gentian Line lore. Thousandth Night is also a very good story featuring Campion and Purslane, although no continuity is intended, or achieved between it and House of Suns; Al said as much in an interview I found somewhere on line. It doesn't matter. Al is not that kind of writer. Al has honed the art of the story. While I absolutely LOVE his world building, I view him as a master storyteller, first and foremost. So when he wants to write one of his fantastic short stories about Gentian Line, even if it's not part of a larger series, I don't really care. I enjoyed them both so much, it just doesn't matter, and I'm thankful they both exist.

House of Suns succeeds on so many levels. The characters were real, vibrant, exotic, and interesting. I can't remember being attached to main characters so deeply since the first time I watched Star Wars in grade school. House of Suns had THAT level of effect on me. At the same time, as an adult, I find House of Suns so much more than Star Wars could ever hope to be. I'd absolutely love to see this COMPETENTLY made into a movie. Maybe give it to Ridley Scott, or (my preference, although probably not a common one) David Lynch.

The story itself is well told, breathtaking in it's scope, yet still manages to provide all manner of mesmerizing, internal machinations, like a giant clock the size of a galaxy, who's parts are made from rubies, diamonds, mercury, gold, amber, sapphire, all illuminated by rainbows and cosmic dust. Vast, interesting, and provides very satisfying landmarks; beginning, middle, and end. For my tastes, perfect structure and cadence. In short, a joy to read.

I tried something new with this one. It's an Al Reynolds book, so even before I started reading, I KNEW I would love it. I mean, there was never really any question. So to help me visualize, and enjoy the characters more, I used the descriptions in the book to try and google image search images that I felt both represented the character, and endeared me more to them. This really worked for me, it added even more to a stellar book, and I will probably do this whenever I read another of Al's books.

I apologize for the crudity of the image below, it was not intended to be a great work of art, merely something to help me picture the characters in my mind. It also helped me imagine their voices.
Maybe someone else will find it of some use.

...more

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Aug 22, 2016 William rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: extraordinary-books

Wonderful and delightful. Certainly his best full-length novel. Three primary characters - Purslane and Campion are lovers, and Hesperus is a rescued "Machine Person" - have enough depth and heart and intelligence to sparkle. The long-winded, page-filling, static dialogue as too-often seen in previous full novels, is blessedly absent here. Well done, Alastair!

A comfortable start into a plot spanning 6 million years; but don't worry, we only see appropriate slices of this expanse of time. The boo ...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Bill rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I've read almost all of Alastair Reynolds's books. "House of Suns" is the most recent I've read, and it just took me away. I don't necessarily recommend it be the first of his works that you read (visit his website to see his recommendations), but for anyone who loves space opera which spans millions of years and millions of light-years, his works, especially this one, are second to none. He is an astrophysicist, and having some knowledge of Einstein's Special and General Relativity allows one t ...more

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Nov 14, 2014 spikeINflorida rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The story of 6 million year old human clones that cruise the galaxy, hooking-up every 200,000 years to share their treasure troves of knowledge and party down. So who the hell would wanna crash and kill such a cool party? The surviving clones, along with their machine C3PO-like buddy, must span galaxies to find out. With mind bending ideas and intergallactic travels, this is an awesome story. One of my all-time favorites. Six stars and highly recommended.

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Feb 18, 2019 Chris Berko rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The best science fiction book I have ever read. That's all I'm going to say, that's all that needs to be said. The best science fiction book I have ever read. ...more

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Sep 23, 2019 Eva rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: five-stars, all-time-favorites

"I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp.

I was a girl then, a single individual called Abigail Gentian."

This is such a fantastic novel! It explores memory, identity, culpability, love among two clones of the same person, intimacy, gender, human potential, and VAST time frames (while staying closely with the main characters). Its setting is th "I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp.

I was a girl then, a single individual called Abigail Gentian."

This is such a fantastic novel! It explores memory, identity, culpability, love among two clones of the same person, intimacy, gender, human potential, and VAST time frames (while staying closely with the main characters). Its setting is the entire galaxy and beyond, it has a good murder mystery, fantastic other kinds of mysteries, creepy but lovable AIs, convincing villains who have a point, weird alien humans of the far future, action scenes in space, tense hide-and-seek, *beautiful prose*, memorable characters - I loved it SO MUCH.

I wish every book was like this and I can't wait to read more Alastair Reynolds. I've been making myself wait and try other new-to-me authors that many people think are great but really I'm just chomping at the bit to read more Reynolds. I just hope the rest of his books come close to this one.

If you absolutely want to hear a quibble because nothing can be *that* deliciously perfect: I could have done without the chase scene at the end, but the 'wah-wah-where-is-the-action' crowd loved that scene in particular, so I guess it was the correct choice to include it. I would have preferred even *more* philosophizing and exploring these cool ideas even further, because Reynolds's thoughts are actually really fascinating and worth thinking about. But the chase scene also shows that he knows what he's doing and how to appeal to a vast array of different kinds of reader, so I don't mind it at all. In addition, it was actually a tense chase scene and I'm the girl who always falls asleep during car chases in movies, so that says a lot. Other quibbles? I was so invested in the present-day story line and mysteries that I sometimes didn't want to go into one of the childhood flashbacks - but that feeling always vanished right away, and the flashbacks were deeply meaningful in the way this memory tried to communicate a deleted and suppressed *other* memory (and answer to one of the mysteries) in symbolic form. So brilliant! So freaking beautiful! So no, I can't really find any flaw with this book and can find so much genius instead.

I'm so happy this is a prolific author who's written a lot of other books already, so I've got a lot to look forward to. ...more

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Jan 15, 2014 David Sven rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, audiobooks

Solid storytelling from Reynolds and a solid performance by audio narrator John Lee combined to make this one of the stand out novels in the Reynolds library. This book was evenly paced in that I didn't feel that there was any lull in the plot or the slow start that is characteristic of many of Reynolds' books. I was engaged with the story from start to finish.

Of the Reynolds books I've read so far that are set in different worlds than Revelation Space, this is the most like his original signatu ...more

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Jan 31, 2017 WarpDrive rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I normally tend not to write reviews on fiction works, as I prefer to focus more on my non-fictional readings, but this time I felt compelled to write something about this masterpiece.
It has been a long time since I had last experienced the pleasure of reading such a beautiful example of space opera.
The width and scope of this ambitious work are simply breathtaking; we are dealing here with a visionary, outstanding work of hard science fiction that manages to address many traditional themes of ...more

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Apr 12, 2009 Robert rated it really liked it

Shelves: sf, wales

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Reynolds now has a sufficient body of published works for certain themes, narrative techniques and favourite tricks to be discernable; most of them are present in this novel, which has a setting independent of all his previous books.

Here we have humanity as a star-faring species for more than 6 million years from the point of view of Earth's rest frame - and if you don't know what a "rest frame" is you may have a little trouble with this book, because Special Relativity plays a crucial role in t Reynolds now has a sufficient body of published works for certain themes, narrative techniques and favourite tricks to be discernable; most of them are present in this novel, which has a setting independent of all his previous books.

Here we have humanity as a star-faring species for more than 6 million years from the point of view of Earth's rest frame - and if you don't know what a "rest frame" is you may have a little trouble with this book, because Special Relativity plays a crucial role in the story and Reynolds takes no time out to explain it. I can remember enough of the theory to take it in my stride, but I don't know whether it would cause a problem for a reader completely unfamiliar with the concept of time dilation. This is the first of Reynolds' themes to become obvious; no faster than light spaceships. He uses this restriction to force creativity the same way e.e. cummings used the restrictions of the sonnet form, and to great effect. I can think of no more convincing "hard SF" writer working today and it is because when it comes to current physics, he never gets it wrong. This fundamental idea forces Reynolds to find answers to questions about how galactic scale exploration could work and come up with solutions that are more or less original - even "suspended animation" gets a new look, possibly influenced by ideas from Iain M. Banks' The Algebraist.

So what has humanity been up to for 6.5 million years? Well, some of them have cloned themselves a thousand times over and started observing the life of the galaxy in near light-speed spaceships - effectively time-travelling into the future as they do so - and holding re-unions every 200,000 years or so, to share their experiences. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the species are doing what they've always done but on a bigger scale - interstellar empires come and go, evolution takes a grip in some places, science progresses.

The story is written from the perspectives of two clones of the same individual who also, against Family tradition, are lovers. They are also late for their Family re-union when they get into some trouble with an unscrupulous space-ship trader....

From there the story slowly accelerates to a break-neck pace - much like the ships in the story - in time for the conclusion. This is a technique also seen in Century Rain and Pushing Ice. It can make the reader feel somewhat underwhelmed in the first third, but the final third makes up for it every time.

There is a trick Reynolds has used repeatedly before and again here, that I feel he needs to be wary of: induced amnesia. The restoration of "erased" memory is perhaps now too obvious a trick for hiding then revealing mysterious circumstances and events. On this occassion, at least the victim is aware of the fact that he is suffering, but really I don't think Reynolds can use the idea as a significant plot device again without it being irritating.

Really that is about the most negative element of the book. The author's penchant for Gothic horrors and really unpleasant, grotesque characters is present, though dialed down a very long way from the freak-show that was Revelation Space and I could quibble that perhaps Reynolds' unique voice is made a little too generic because it has been pushed too low in the mix, this time around. Readers need characters they can like, especially in long novels, but there is a balance to be struck; perhaps Pushing Ice saw that balance being hit almost perfectly because the leading characters were so realistic yet flawed. Of course, Reynolds turned it up to 11 in Diamond Dogs - but you can do that if you're only expecting to hold the reader for 100 pages or so - more of that, please!

Overall, this is recognisable Reynolds writing a story that grips like a slowly tightening vise and drags you to some unexpected places, well worth the read and as good as any of his other longer novels. ...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Frank rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, fantasy, space-opera

This book has all the hallmarks of Alastair Reynolds' writing: Grand scale space opera with a convoluted and fascinating plot that only fully unravels at the very end. If you like other of Alastair Reynolds' space opera, I am quite certain this one will not disappoint.

I liked the way that there was a bit of fantasy intertwined in the story but all contained in a technologically feasible way. The main plot, however, concerns one of several groups of clones that travel the galaxy spending a lot of ...more

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Dec 17, 2020 L.S. Popovich rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020, sf-masterworks, audiobook-greats, 5-star, british-irish-welsh-scottish, science-fiction, space

A dense mosaic of mesmerizing notions injected with a jumbo-sized hypo of s-f crack, rich with subtle corollaries of theory and conjecture. Huge, labyrinthine, wild. My first Reynolds. Now I have that combination of elation and despair, knowing that I'm in it for the long haul. I have to read all of his books. There's no way around it. Only, what the hell? 10,000 pages to go...

Standing on the shoulders of such giants as Asimov, Clarke, Niven, and basically everyone, Reynolds paints a massive mur A dense mosaic of mesmerizing notions injected with a jumbo-sized hypo of s-f crack, rich with subtle corollaries of theory and conjecture. Huge, labyrinthine, wild. My first Reynolds. Now I have that combination of elation and despair, knowing that I'm in it for the long haul. I have to read all of his books. There's no way around it. Only, what the hell? 10,000 pages to go...

Standing on the shoulders of such giants as Asimov, Clarke, Niven, and basically everyone, Reynolds paints a massive mural across the stars, encompassing every sciencey idea under multiple suns.

The scale of the timeline is gross, morbidly obese, and grotesquely complex, adding layers of incomprehensibility to the nefarious plot. But telling any tale over the course of millions of years is bound to generate more questions than answers. I admire the gumption, the gall.

Maybe you s-f geniuses out there could help me catch up to the hundred essential concepts I probably missed. Why is a star-dam so dangerous, if unlocked? We are dealing with space-faring legions. How is anything a threat when you have all that space to escape into? Let's say they point the dam at you (How would they, anyway?) - can't you just move out of the way? It's light-minutes away, so wouldn't the intensity dissipate over the distance?

Honestly, I don't feel like reading tons of reviews and summaries to try and fill in the gaps. I am content to let the mysteries evaporate within the supermassive cloud of ideas left over in my mind. My consciousness felt like a machine person's after reaching the finale, that is, uncontained within my skull, transitorily disparate within my corporeal system.

Apart from analyzing the wacky concepts to be found on every page (in every freaking paragraph), there is a lot of swagger to this impressive novel. Enough adventure and intrigue to plunge you into a cold sweat for hours of adrenaline-filled reading panic-cum-ecstasy.

Utilizing dreamy flashbacks, and story-telling through conversations which sometimes take years within the relative timescape of the narrative, Reynoldissimo weaves ring worlds, Dyson swarms, and wormholes dropped into massive stars to fuel intricate meta-civilizations, with lots of clone shenanigans, some let's-not-call-it-incest-because-we're-clones, and even a few genuine-ish relationships. Shatterlings (clones) manage to make the most of their ridiculously long lifespans, charting courses across galaxies, interacting with sentient cosmic nonentities, reporting on the fall of vast empires, and centaurs (why centaurs?).

My pupils were time-dilated frequently. More than any other book I've read, with the possible exception of Cixin Liu's Death's End, this one exhibits the propensity to explore the physical and mental event horizon of the science fiction genre, making the quantum leap into speculative literature of the highest order.

Light on the character development, with occasional Hollywoodized dialogue, Reynolds still blows Lem, Heinlein, and Niven out of the water. He carves out a continent of potentialities for his own territory, plants his flag firmly into the firmament of s-f gods, picking and choosing from the vast trove of futuristic archives of amazing stuff we have discovered as a species (or thought about too much) to condense the juicy bits into a gormandizing cornucopia of freakish proportions. Quite a trip. ...more

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Jun 01, 2012 Robert Delikat rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi, religion

I am always on the lookout for new SF authors. I have read most if not all of Hamilton, Clarke, Vonnegut, Wells, Simmons, Asimov, and Herbert among other greats. This was my first Alastair Reynolds book. I cannot say I was overwhelmed by it in any way. When I read by a reviewer that I follow that Reynolds pushes the boundaries of the genre in new directions, I was ready for something special. I feel disappointed.

That a progenitor fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones seemed in ...more

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Dec 09, 2015 Claudia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: z-to-a-reynolds, sci-fi

Another exquisite novel of Al R - so intense, so full of meanings, so full of action, so dense, so vast, so beguiling, that I don’t know with what to begin my eulogy.

- with the colorful universe?

"Ateshga’s world […] was an outrageous confection of a planet: a striped marshmallow giant with a necklace of sugary rings, combed and braided by the resonant forces of a dozen glazed and candied moons."

- with the reflections about civilizations when measured on time scale?

"People lived and died

...more

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Aug 28, 2020 Efka rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, space-opera

Quite vast and very intelligent, this sci-fi/space opera book borders on hard science fiction, but at the same time Reynolds, who is quickly becoming one of my most favorite writers, manages to achieve what most, in my experience, fail to do. That's creating strong, well developed, realistic characters - both human and AI, by the way - and that is not something trivial to achieve. And at the same time, neither plot nor the scientific parts had been sacrificed for characters. Don't know about you ...more

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Apr 04, 2012 Heidi rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: fans of epic space opera and characters with depth

Shelves: sf-space-opera, sci-fi, author-reynolds, reviewed, format-paper, winners-sci-fi, sf-ai-and-robots, me-heartbreaker

If it was possible to give this novel 6 stars, I would. I finished it just half an hour ago, and I'm still floating out there in space, unwilling to return to the confinements of our small blue planet.

"House of Suns" is big in every sense of the word, and it would have been easy to bury the characters, their feelings and relationships under the vast scope of time the story covers, the gigantic spaceships, the huge mysteries and conflicts.
That doesn't happen. Amidst the rise and fall of entire c If it was possible to give this novel 6 stars, I would. I finished it just half an hour ago, and I'm still floating out there in space, unwilling to return to the confinements of our small blue planet.

"House of Suns" is big in every sense of the word, and it would have been easy to bury the characters, their feelings and relationships under the vast scope of time the story covers, the gigantic spaceships, the huge mysteries and conflicts.
That doesn't happen. Amidst the rise and fall of entire civilisations, the destiny of Purslane and Campion, essentially two clones of a young woman named Abigail Gentian, but also fully fledged individuals with their own histories and personalities, and the golden robot Hesperus rises to a grandeur of its own.

There are no aliens in this novel, but over the course of millions of years, humanity has evolved into many different forms of sentient life, many of which are barely recognisable as humans anymore.
Abigail's clones are - though augmented - human through and through, in every respect, and they have all their creator's memories of a time when humanity was still confined to our solar system. But what happens if you combine almost godlike powers and a life span bordering on immortality with human fallibility and instable character traits?

I'm sure even this book has its flaws, and if I take it apart, I might find them. But I don't want to. I enjoyed every single page, the tight and fast-paced storytelling, the characterisations, the mysteries piled up on top of other mysteries and the fact that, with few lesser important exceptions, the author resolves all of them. There are no significant loose threads left in the end.
The science aspects partly went straight over my head, but I don't have to understand how something works, but what it does, and Reynolds served my needs just fine.

"House of Suns" is definitely an all-time favourite, and for once I cherish the fact that I tend to forget things pretty quickly. When I pick it up again in a few years, it might just feel like the first time, and that's surely something to look forward to. ...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Sci-Fi Group Book...: House of Suns	3	13	Jan 08, 2019 07:49AM
Space Opera Fans : House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds	32	139	Apr 30, 2016 06:51PM
Ciencia Ficción e...: Lectura enero-febrero: Casa de soles	37	114	Feb 29, 2016 03:52PM
Reddit SF Book Club: House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds is the December 2013 selection	1	19	Dec 05, 2013 06:45PM
Beyond Reality: 2012-01 HOUSE OF SUNS: finished reading (SPOILERS)	17	94	Aug 16, 2012 08:06AM
Beyond Reality: 2012-01 HOUSE OF SUNS: roll call and first impressions (NO SPOILERS)	14	53	Jan 30, 2012 01:47PM

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About Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds

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I'm Al, I used to be a space scientist, and now I'm a writer, although for a time the two careers ran in parallel. I started off publishing short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone in the early 90s, then eventually branched into novels. I write about a novel a year and try to write a few short stories as well. Some of my books and stories are set in a consistent future named after Revela ...more

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Quotes from House of Suns

“To see something marvellous with your own eyes - that’s wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you’ll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold an incomplete half of it, and that it won’t ever really exist as a whole until you’re together, talking or thinking about that moment ... that’s worth more than one plus one. It’s worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can’t even imagine it.” — 20 likes

“The first six million years had been all fun and games.” — 13 likes

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