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House of Suns

by Alastair Reynolds

4.19 · Rating details · 14,905 Ratings · 776 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 2009 by Gollancz (first published April 17th 2008)

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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!

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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: favorites, sf-top-20

"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 hundr

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

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

Shelves: favorites, galaxy-spanning, hard-sf

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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Mar 26, 2013 Brad 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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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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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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Apr 05, 2017 M. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

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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Dec 13, 2011 Oscar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: míos, ciencia-ficción, space-opera, cf-hard, futuro-lejano

La mejor ciencia ficción que se escribe actualmente corre por parte de los autores británicos, y eso es incuestionable. Talentos de la talla de Iain M. Banks, Peter F. Hamilton, Paul McAuley, Ian R. MacLeod, Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter o el mismo Alastair Reynolds, son buena prueba de ello. Todos poseen talento e imaginación, pero Alastair tiene algo que lo convierte en único, posee inventiva y ambición por superarse a sí mismo en cada libro, aunque no siempre lo consigue, pero al menos siemp La mejor ciencia ficción que se escribe actualmente corre por parte de los autores británicos, y eso es incuestionable. Talentos de la talla de Iain M. Banks, Peter F. Hamilton, Paul McAuley, Ian R. MacLeod, Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter o el mismo Alastair Reynolds, son buena prueba de ello. Todos poseen talento e imaginación, pero Alastair tiene algo que lo convierte en único, posee inventiva y ambición por superarse a sí mismo en cada libro, aunque no siempre lo consigue, pero al menos siempre busca ideas con las que impactar a sus lectores.

‘Casa de Soles’ transcurre fuera de su conocido universo Espacio Revelación, algo que, sinceramente, se echa de menos. Al empezar la novela, nos encontramos con Abigail Gentian, una niña que vive en una mansión de dimensiones enormes, con millones de habitaciones. Cada una de las ocho partes de que consta la novela comienza con unas páginas dedicadas a Abigail, algo que nos ayudará a comprender el porqué de lo que vamos leyendo.

Porque en realidad, ‘Casa de Soles’ está protagonizada por Campion y Purslane, una pareja shatterling, perteneciente al Clan Gentian, que se dedican a recorrer la galaxia, como el resto de miembros del clan, en sus naves interestelares. Algunas de las misiones del clan, consisten en colocar presas basadas en mundo anillos alrededor de estrellas, para la seguridad de las civilizaciones más cercanas a ellas. Completado un circuito completo, que dura millones de años, han de volver para reunirse y compartir sus memorias. Cuando casi están terminando uno de estos circuitos, se encuentran con un posthumano llamado Ateshga, que tras diversas aventuras, les llevará a conocer a Hesperus, un robot miembro de la raza de los Mecánicos. Pero lo que parece un viaje a una típica reunión del clan, se convierte en una pesadilla de dimensiones impredecibles.

Como siempre, Alastair nos ofrece una historia de grandes proporciones, donde no se habla de años sino de millones de años, y en donde la originalidad y el entretenimiento están asegurados. Sin duda, se trata de lo mejor que se puede encontrar en materia de ciencia ficción actualmente, y en concreto en lo que a space opera se refiere. ...more

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

Shelves: science-fiction, space-opera, reviewed

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

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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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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Jan 31, 2017 Fortunr 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

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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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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Jan 21, 2012 Mike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone

This book is a bit different than most of the others that inhabit the “Revelation Space” universe. While it is a common backdrop to several books, they are not the classic Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, ad nauseam type of series where a few key characters inhabit multiple stories. (Don’t shoot me just yet. I also like series such as that – even trilogies that have five or six volumes.) Even though each has its own separate plots and actors, much of the tales exist within a span off 200-300 years. Not so t This book is a bit different than most of the others that inhabit the “Revelation Space” universe. While it is a common backdrop to several books, they are not the classic Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, ad nauseam type of series where a few key characters inhabit multiple stories. (Don’t shoot me just yet. I also like series such as that – even trilogies that have five or six volumes.) Even though each has its own separate plots and actors, much of the tales exist within a span off 200-300 years. Not so this one.

I know that some do not consider “House of Suns” to inhabit the “Revelation Space” universe, but all of the underpinnings are the same, so I see it as a part, albeit a distant one. And distant it is: set approximately 6 million years in the future. Except for sections which deal with the past in the present tense (did everyone get that – I’m trying to restrict the spoiler effect), the action takes place in the far future and spans a lot of sidereal time.

In addition to having a remote endpoint in time (and a very long timeline), I felt that the scope of this book was far greater than the previous books. Take “The Prefect” for example (the book I most recently read). The day-to-day action takes place within the “Glitter Band” and over only a short time. Even if you include the earliest “past” that is directly involved with the story the span is at most 80 years. Geographically and chronologically it is a very “compact” book.

“House of Suns” is almost its complete opposite. The actors travel huge intra-galactic distances and take tens of thousands of years (or more) to do so. The central characters are long-lived both from relativistic effects and from using stasis or freezing techniques. They have a very long perspective on most things. Ultimately some even journey to another galaxy. This is a very “expansive” book.

So what does different add up to?

Like all of Mr. Reynolds’ books, the writing is tight, the characters well-drawn and believable, and the imagination level (creativity) is very high. It is another excellent work by a very good author. In addition to showing us how well he creates things, this book lets Mr. Reynolds show off a bit of his past life. He gets to write up (and explain) the Faster Than Light (FTL) causality violation and why it matters. Later on, he "solves” this same problem (which explains a significant story element). In keeping with his “hard science” style, he gives us the essential tools to fabricate ships, disperse explorers, and reach the future.

Like “The Prefect”, “House of Suns” uses split viewpoints to tell its story. But the device, as before, is used with restraint. Only three people are the “lead” and the swaps are well managed. Making it very easy to follow and know whose voice is speaking. I’m sure we have all read books where this is not so.

If I had to find something to quibble about, I would say that even the primary characters are a little remote. In a way it reminds me of some of Issac Asimov’s stories; great writing, story and ideas, but a little wooden with the people. Not that I do not like these characters or understand them, I just think that the two who are “involved” could have been less aloof about each other. Maybe that would have taken away from the grandeur and scope of the book, but I don’t think so.

If you have wished for a book that takes on the future and how we make a place in it, then look no more. This book develops a solution and takes us on one part of that journey. There are lots of good, often used ideas here, but seldom have they been combined with such great effect. I only have a few more unread books by this author. I’m starting to get that feeling that occasionally makes me rip through a whole series (or even total output). Am I the only one that feels like immersing themselves in an author like that?

This book is at least a solid “4”, maybe a “4.5”. I hope everything else is just as good.

...more

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

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

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 and

...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: sci-fi, winners-fiction, owned, reviewed, space-opera, sci-fi-favourites, author-reynolds, ai-and-robots, heartbreakers

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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Jul 19, 2009 Loothi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The pacing of Alastair Reynolds' novels feel a bit predicatable when you've read a few. A bit like Nirvana songs from the Nevermind album. Despite that, I'm always completely absorbed by his characters and their worlds so it's not such a bad thing.

House of Suns is another epic space opera. Our narrators are from a society of future humans struggling with emerging machine intelligences, other more exotic human iterations, family betrayals and old fashioned love affairs across the aeons.

Our huma ...more

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Sep 18, 2010 Ric rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is the kind of novel Reynolds was meant to write. Full of big ideas and wow scenarios. An unusual and entertaining focal character. A charming robot who's just a little bit quirky. A love story that transcends millenia. And a trip to another galaxy. The author puts it all together in a compelling read full of sfnal surprise and sense of wonder.

As always, there are the familiar Reynolds elements. Kilometers long space ships. No faster than light travel (except for one). Profound astronomical

...more

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Feb 02, 2016 Daniel Gonzalo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Pedazo Novelón. Puede que sea la mejor de novela de Space Opera Hard que he leído. Brutal

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Jul 21, 2008 Ben Babcock rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, science-fiction, 2008-read, posthuman, space-opera

One of those books that picks you up and takes you on a journey. I was ambivalent about it at first, but I quickly became enthusiastic. Reynolds' style allows for an ease of exposition: in a couple of sentences, he can give you an idea of the nature of several different civilizations without going too in depth. This skill allows him to construct the epic scope required for a space opera of this nature.

And epic it is indeed. Spanning millions of years, House of Suns deals with space travel in a r One of those books that picks you up and takes you on a journey. I was ambivalent about it at first, but I quickly became enthusiastic. Reynolds' style allows for an ease of exposition: in a couple of sentences, he can give you an idea of the nature of several different civilizations without going too in depth. This skill allows him to construct the epic scope required for a space opera of this nature.

And epic it is indeed. Spanning millions of years, House of Suns deals with space travel in a refreshing light. Most science fiction revolves around a method of superluminal travel. This is necessary in order to tell a story in a comprehensible length of time (it's not necessary to tell a story, as many authors demonstrate). Reynolds combines a number of hard SF concepts (cloning, sleeper travel/stasis, memory alteration, etc.) while avoiding the whiz-bang action of superluminal travel. This requires a great deal of relativistic action (literally), and it's at this point that the science part of the book may be difficult for some readers to comprehend. Chances are if you enjoy reading hard SF, however, it's because you enjoy things like relativity!

For me, some of the scariest concepts involve memory and the nature of self. The main characters are two of one thousand clones of a single human woman who lived (in the time the main story is set) approximately six million years ago in an expansive human empire. Yet these clones have been genetically tweaked to have different personalities and characteristics (to the point of having different genders). They are explorers, reunited after circumnavigating the galaxy in order to share the knowledge they've collected. It's an interesting concept. The idea that you can map someone's mind, download his or her memories and duplicate the consciousness--the self--is scary. It's been discussed over and over in SF, of course (I particularly enjoyed Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan). Reynolds wields this concept masterfully, because many of the main characters are actually radically divergent copies of one original person. It just gets weirder from there.

I figured out who the traitor was before the traitor was unmasked. That doesn't stop the enjoyment of the plot. Unfortunately, the last act of the book did let me down somewhat. I am hoping this is the first in a new series, because otherwise the ending is postmodernly ambiguous. It's hopeful but nihilistic at the same time--working in comsological time can do that to humans, as the main characters observe. Our consciousnesses are not built to function for millions of consecutive years (which is why the main characters have only lived for several thousand subjective years, biologically possible thanks to technology, while entering "abeyance" during extended space travel). The implications of events in the book mean that even if you take the ending to mean that our protagonists have ultimately succeeded, it's possible that the people they were trying to save no longer even exist.

The last act of the book does slow down and get more predictable, although one part did give me a delicious sensation at the end, when we learn the true reason for the Absence. It's clever.

Well worth the read if you're into hard SF! ...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Terence rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Reynolds, Hard SF, space opera fans

Shelves: sf-fantasy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Rating: 2.8-3 stars

Six million years from now humanity has spread throughout the galaxy using slower-than-light (STL) ships. (One of the nice things about Reynolds’ SF is that he’s scrupulous about obeying physical laws – at least as they’re understood today.) At the dawn of this era, Abigail Gentian was among a group of wealthy families that had themselves cloned so that they could wander across space observing the rise and fall of human & alien civilizations. Abigail created 1,000 clones – ...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Jamie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A couple of years ago I made a conscious effort to advance my reading habits and actively seek out the best that Sci-Fi had to offer rather than casually browse the local bookshop.
The path swiftly and inevitably led to Alistair Reynolds.

I started at the obvious place, the Revelation Space trilogy and my mind was promptly blown to pieces. House of Suns was supposed to be a quick Reynolds side-track before returning to the other Revelation space novels only to find what is so far the single greate ...more

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Feb 08, 2016 Antonio Diaz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: must-read, english-owned

La primera novela de Alastair Reynolds que leo y definitivamente no es un autor que deje indiferente a nadie.

En House of Suns el autor nos dibuja un espacio que se ve enorme por la ausencia de métodos de vuelo superlumínicos. Reynolds juega muy bien y aprovecha al máximo los efectos relativistas de los viajes espaciales con las Líneas. Entre eso y los Big Dumb Objects tenemos la sensación de entrar en una habitación enorme siendo casi microscópicos toda la novela.

El punto más flojo es el perfila ...more

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Aug 23, 2010 Paul Forbes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Oh my. What a wonderful book. Beautifully written. Engaging characters. Brilliant story. Great ending. This is one of the best novels I've ever read, let alone one of the best sci-fi. Every single page has something to add to the story, there are no pages thrown in to pad it out it's 502 pages. It might be a bit heavy for non science fiction fans (some of it deals with faster than light travel and why it's impossible) but for fans of the genre it's very highly recommended. I think I've found my ...more

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Apr 22, 2015 Roviragrao rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Pocas veces una novela de ciencia ficción me ha enganchado tantísimo.

Me ha gustado muchísimo en conjunto, pero si tengo que destacar algo es la capacidad del autor para dosificar la información, creo que lo hace de un modo brillante y consigue mantener el interés en todo momento, aunque por su temática no sea precisamente una lectura ligera.

Si te gusta la ciencia ficción, no te la pierdas. Es una novela fascinante.

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Space Opera Fans : House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds	32	115	Apr 30, 2016 06:51PM
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Beyond Reality: 2012-01 HOUSE OF SUNS: finished reading (SPOILERS)	17	85	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, former scientist and now full-time writer. Most of what he writes is science fiction, with a strong concern for scientific verisimilitude (although he is prepared to break the rules for the sake of a good story). He has lived in England, Scotland and the Netherlands where he worked as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency until 2004, but now makes his home back in his ...more

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“The first six million years had been all fun and games.” — 11 likes

“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.” — 11 likes

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