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The Lighthouse of Kuiper
A voice from the darkness promises utopia…
…whatever the cost.
Earth is lost, humanity’s presence there a mere footnote in history. Now, the human race clings to a precarious existence in the void, scattered across the solar system. The line between life and death has never been thinner.
Nothing in Ambera “Tharsis” Chen’s life has turned out the way she hoped. A military commission and assignment out beyond Mars’s gravity well seemed like a grand adventure. Instead, she’s stuck at a dead-end base with a terrible commander. Disillusioned, all she wants to do now is serve out her time and go home.
So when a friend offers a night of dimension-hopping fun, Tharsis can’t resist. Who cares if it’s illegal?
But her friend’s intentions are far from innocent. And the Kuiper, silent for decades, has begun speaking again.
Soon, Tharsis finds herself racing across the system, embroiled in a plot to reawaken an ancient power, calling out from beyond the edges of habitable space. Will she find the will to silence the voices forever, or will chaos reign again?
…whatever the cost.
Earth is lost, humanity’s presence there a mere footnote in history. Now, the human race clings to a precarious existence in the void, scattered across the solar system. The line between life and death has never been thinner.
Nothing in Ambera “Tharsis” Chen’s life has turned out the way she hoped. A military commission and assignment out beyond Mars’s gravity well seemed like a grand adventure. Instead, she’s stuck at a dead-end base with a terrible commander. Disillusioned, all she wants to do now is serve out her time and go home.
So when a friend offers a night of dimension-hopping fun, Tharsis can’t resist. Who cares if it’s illegal?
But her friend’s intentions are far from innocent. And the Kuiper, silent for decades, has begun speaking again.
Soon, Tharsis finds herself racing across the system, embroiled in a plot to reawaken an ancient power, calling out from beyond the edges of habitable space. Will she find the will to silence the voices forever, or will chaos reign again?
- GenresScience Fiction
Paperback
Published October 29, 2022
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53 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 2, 2023
Even without knowing the author’s background, the book description already makes it clear this is military science fiction. The military part mainly lies in the fact that Tharsis, the main protagonist, is in the military, and in the command structures that are present, and not so much in tactical (space) battles. The general society structure and story type are comparable to The Expanse (for instance). In both cases, the entire plot revolves around a handful of characters single-handedly tackling a solar system wide problem while also battling some personal inner daemons. The Lighthouse of Kuiper is not The Expanse of course, but it gives an idea of where in the broad spectrum of science fiction this story can be situated.
Rensing has come up with a fair amount of new ideas and they are fired at the reader at a rapid pace. Keeping up with the rapidly expanding new terminology is hard. There's no glossary so once you've forgotten what something meant —which happened to me sooner than I expected— there's nothing to fall back on. Moreover, the new concepts are only explained sparsely and rather vague. I don’t mind that things are left to the reader’s imagination, but in this case you really need to guess *a lot* of concepts by how the author uses them. I was constantly puzzling together small fragments of information and even then not really getting it always. As a consequence, it was difficult to get into the story, and I regularly got lost and went back, often not to any avail. After having read about a third, I realized I was still wondering too often what it all meant and what I actually was reading, and that I was not spending time enjoying the story because of that. Unfortunately, it never got any better. I stubbornly kept reading, and while some things became clear to me eventually, others I was never able to really fathom.
A second stumbling stone was the strong language. Rensing generally has a pleasant writing style that is easy to like, but the excessive use of f*ck(ing) and scat (the word for sh*t in this book) is truly appalling. I am not sure there actually is a page on which none of those words are used. Swear words and strong language have never made a book better, imho, and it really started to annoy me after a while. It was an unnecessarily distraction away from trying to understand and getting to like the story.
Based on the book description, I was convinced that this book was right up my alley. The ideas that Rensing has are really original and interesting and are 100% something I would usually like, but the choices about how to construct the entire story telling, as explained above, made me never get into it and it always felt like I was behind on things. Alas, the click never came.
Rensing has come up with a fair amount of new ideas and they are fired at the reader at a rapid pace. Keeping up with the rapidly expanding new terminology is hard. There's no glossary so once you've forgotten what something meant —which happened to me sooner than I expected— there's nothing to fall back on. Moreover, the new concepts are only explained sparsely and rather vague. I don’t mind that things are left to the reader’s imagination, but in this case you really need to guess *a lot* of concepts by how the author uses them. I was constantly puzzling together small fragments of information and even then not really getting it always. As a consequence, it was difficult to get into the story, and I regularly got lost and went back, often not to any avail. After having read about a third, I realized I was still wondering too often what it all meant and what I actually was reading, and that I was not spending time enjoying the story because of that. Unfortunately, it never got any better. I stubbornly kept reading, and while some things became clear to me eventually, others I was never able to really fathom.
A second stumbling stone was the strong language. Rensing generally has a pleasant writing style that is easy to like, but the excessive use of f*ck(ing) and scat (the word for sh*t in this book) is truly appalling. I am not sure there actually is a page on which none of those words are used. Swear words and strong language have never made a book better, imho, and it really started to annoy me after a while. It was an unnecessarily distraction away from trying to understand and getting to like the story.
Based on the book description, I was convinced that this book was right up my alley. The ideas that Rensing has are really original and interesting and are 100% something I would usually like, but the choices about how to construct the entire story telling, as explained above, made me never get into it and it always felt like I was behind on things. Alas, the click never came.
May 1, 2023
I tried so hard to get into this book. I loved the premise, and I was promised a fresh new take on the sci-fi genre. What I did like was the characterisation - strong voices heard all around. But it took me too long to get into this book, and I found myself having to re-read sections and try to keep up with the narrative. To me, if I can’t immerse myself in a book quickly and relatively easily, it’s not a book I’m going to enjoy. DNF at approx 20%.
3 stars because I think this book stands up, and can hold its own in the genre of sci-fi, and will delight many other readers. It just wasn’t for me.
3 stars because I think this book stands up, and can hold its own in the genre of sci-fi, and will delight many other readers. It just wasn’t for me.
November 12, 2022
E. M. Rensing has done what most authors fail to do--craft a unique world and story. In a world where writers are constantly told "there are no new ideas" E. M Rensing found one. The universe that the author created is rich in detail and history, layers upon layers of details build a vivid picture in your head.
Well done E. M. Rensing.
Thanks for the ARC copy E. M. Rensing.
Well done E. M. Rensing.
Thanks for the ARC copy E. M. Rensing.
May 6, 2023
Beware there is a lengthy and confusing preamble to contend with before hitting the tale proper. BUT I FEEL ITS WORTH IT!
I was struggling to understand and remember everything in the first few chapters and was considering giving up but i decided to go with the flow and concentrate less and just get a feel for the history of human expansion into the solar system and hoped it would make more sense later.
I think it was approximately chapter eight before i felt i was starting to get into the story and begin to enjoy it. And it is a good hard sci-fi tale with lots of clever concepts. The main character Tharsis is likeable as we follow her dealings with the all powerful Landlords of the system.. I never found the reading easy and i presume that is a deliberate ploy from the author to keep readers thinking. And it is a book that keeps you thinking once finished.
I was struggling to understand and remember everything in the first few chapters and was considering giving up but i decided to go with the flow and concentrate less and just get a feel for the history of human expansion into the solar system and hoped it would make more sense later.
I think it was approximately chapter eight before i felt i was starting to get into the story and begin to enjoy it. And it is a good hard sci-fi tale with lots of clever concepts. The main character Tharsis is likeable as we follow her dealings with the all powerful Landlords of the system.. I never found the reading easy and i presume that is a deliberate ploy from the author to keep readers thinking. And it is a book that keeps you thinking once finished.
May 13, 2023
I’m angry at this book. I really wanted to like it, but I did not finish it. I started to get restless at the 15% mark and at the 17% mark I skipped ahead to 20% to see if anything improved and it didn’t and I gave up.
Of the recent science fiction I have read, I think this wins top marks for imagination and ambition. There are flashes of excellent writing but not enough and it gets a hard fail for story telling.
I think it is a tragedy that no editor thought to guide the writer to reduce the amount of exposition and dialog.
Personal notes: quibbles, notes on style and structure. Some spoilers.
Jargon
For the first 5% of the book I was impressed by the fluidity of the writing and the story telling. But soon the constant jargon from the characters began to bother me and then the jargon spilled over to the narrator.
I think jargon has its place. It builds atmosphere, builds mystery and expectation. It is important not to dump too much jargon all at once, to allow users to understand jargon from context and not to keep too many terms mysterious for too long. One or two important world-building elements can be kept mysterious but if the dialog is peppered with unexplained words it gets old fast.
Infodumps and poor pacing
The author has thought up a very rich and detailed world but the pace of the story is badly damaged by long dialog that is concocted expressly for world building, and more frequent and long, undisguised narrative tracts of world building.
The first chapter of the book is written very engagingly, with world building subtly slipped into dialog and plot, setting an excellent pace. This high quality falls off a cliff quickly and we devolve into the infodumps. The assumption is that after the first chapter we are invested in the story and will tolerate this, but this assumption should not be misused.
And it’s not just this book. I see this pattern repeatedly. It’s almost like the first chapter of current books is being tuned to grab an agent, publisher or reader and the effort put into the rest of the work is much less. It speaks to a lack of love.
Bad choice of invented pronoun: “Hen”
Invented pronouns never went out of fashion in science fiction. This story uses it, but not in any central or definitive manner. In previous examples I’ve run across, the authors have been careful to invent a new word (like Xe for example). The problem is that you run the risk of it being interpreted as a name (Xe, for example could be a Chinese name).
In this book the invented pronoun is “hen”. This is an unfortunate choice as it lends some unintended comedy where it is used, and some confusion.
It is also used following noun rules, so we have sentences that go “tDaer stuck hen’s hand in it”. Whether this is worse than “tDaer stuck hen hand in it” is up for debate. The distraction over this invented pronoun disrupted my immersion without any payoff.
On top of this, it is not used consistently, which tDaer being referred to as him and he in places.
Supernatural stuff in Science Fiction
I don’t like supernatural stuff mixed in with my science fiction. I know Dune is considered to have done it well, but my personal taste for this is “No thank you”. which is what I said to Dune. At about the 10% mark we get a wonderfully done passage which then slips us into the supernatural. As we go on this supernatural bit (a la “I see dead people”) gets more page space. Does it turn out interesting? Sadly I did not have the patience to find out.
Minor things: constant homonym confusion
“Discrete” is repeatedly spelt “discreet”. This makes me more annoyed than it probably should, probably because it indicates a certain carelessness on part of the author. There is also another word that is consistently mixed up that I can’t be bothered to go back and dig up.
Of the recent science fiction I have read, I think this wins top marks for imagination and ambition. There are flashes of excellent writing but not enough and it gets a hard fail for story telling.
I think it is a tragedy that no editor thought to guide the writer to reduce the amount of exposition and dialog.
Personal notes: quibbles, notes on style and structure. Some spoilers.
Jargon
For the first 5% of the book I was impressed by the fluidity of the writing and the story telling. But soon the constant jargon from the characters began to bother me and then the jargon spilled over to the narrator.
I think jargon has its place. It builds atmosphere, builds mystery and expectation. It is important not to dump too much jargon all at once, to allow users to understand jargon from context and not to keep too many terms mysterious for too long. One or two important world-building elements can be kept mysterious but if the dialog is peppered with unexplained words it gets old fast.
Infodumps and poor pacing
The author has thought up a very rich and detailed world but the pace of the story is badly damaged by long dialog that is concocted expressly for world building, and more frequent and long, undisguised narrative tracts of world building.
The first chapter of the book is written very engagingly, with world building subtly slipped into dialog and plot, setting an excellent pace. This high quality falls off a cliff quickly and we devolve into the infodumps. The assumption is that after the first chapter we are invested in the story and will tolerate this, but this assumption should not be misused.
And it’s not just this book. I see this pattern repeatedly. It’s almost like the first chapter of current books is being tuned to grab an agent, publisher or reader and the effort put into the rest of the work is much less. It speaks to a lack of love.
Bad choice of invented pronoun: “Hen”
Invented pronouns never went out of fashion in science fiction. This story uses it, but not in any central or definitive manner. In previous examples I’ve run across, the authors have been careful to invent a new word (like Xe for example). The problem is that you run the risk of it being interpreted as a name (Xe, for example could be a Chinese name).
In this book the invented pronoun is “hen”. This is an unfortunate choice as it lends some unintended comedy where it is used, and some confusion.
It is also used following noun rules, so we have sentences that go “tDaer stuck hen’s hand in it”. Whether this is worse than “tDaer stuck hen hand in it” is up for debate. The distraction over this invented pronoun disrupted my immersion without any payoff.
On top of this, it is not used consistently, which tDaer being referred to as him and he in places.
Supernatural stuff in Science Fiction
I don’t like supernatural stuff mixed in with my science fiction. I know Dune is considered to have done it well, but my personal taste for this is “No thank you”. which is what I said to Dune. At about the 10% mark we get a wonderfully done passage which then slips us into the supernatural. As we go on this supernatural bit (a la “I see dead people”) gets more page space. Does it turn out interesting? Sadly I did not have the patience to find out.
Minor things: constant homonym confusion
“Discrete” is repeatedly spelt “discreet”. This makes me more annoyed than it probably should, probably because it indicates a certain carelessness on part of the author. There is also another word that is consistently mixed up that I can’t be bothered to go back and dig up.
August 3, 2023
Very innovative sf set some hundreds of years in the future in a ravaged Solar System loose polity called the Heliosphere where immortal (sort of at least) "Landlords" (one for each planetary in-well more or less), try and keep civilization going under the Accords that (sort of) bind them; unfortunately one of them, the mysterious Arcna of the farthest reaches, now supposedly residing in mysterious Noqumiut a fabled, Shangri-La paradise (at least in the beliefs of the millions of her followers) in the Kuiper Belt, is truly mad and every century or so starts preaching about the remaking of the polity to be just, a paradise for everyone, a fulfillment of humanity potential and all the usual propaganda bs, etc etc though, of course, these ravings, called Propagations, that overwhelm the censorship of the Landlords and are widely broadcasted everywhere through mysterious means, only lead to immense violence and bloodshed (not that the other Landlords are much saner though, but their madness lacks the grandiose megalomania of Arcna); after some 70 years of (more or less) peace another Propagation seems on the horizon, though this one may turn even deadlier...
With a lot of jargon that is sometimes difficult to follow and breaks the narrative flow and quite claustrophobic on occasion, the novel is still very innovative with an original setting and interesting characters - Caleb Ross, the Landlord of Mars, a former sergeant who reincarnates at 24 every time he dies with little memories of his previous lives, Ambera Chen aka "Tharsis" from her middle of nowhere homestead, a young lieutenant in the Arran (the Martian civilization) army who gets entangled by chance in all and through whose eyes we travel from one end of the Heliosphere to another, major Lanin, a dutiful Arran officer, the previous commander of Tharsis and of the newly reincarnated Landlord, tDaer, the newest incarnation of the genetic Daer line of Iapetus, a young idealistic researcher who is willing to skirt the Accords and defy the Landlords to show humanity the way towards the paradise promised by Arcna, a Jovian princeling in for money and power, another Jovian but a fanatic follower of Arcna's teaching and of course various other Landlords who interact with the main characters in colorful locations throughout the Heliosphere.
With an ending that is partly a cliffhanger, and partly a resolution of the main plot, The Lighthouse of Kuiper is worth persevering through, ignoring the jargon when necessary as most of it becomes clearer as the novel progresses as it is packed with interesting ideas, world-building characters, past history and of course adventure, fights, tragedy, and even a little romance.
Highly recommended and hopefully the immediate sequel The Ariums of Earth will be as good as this one
With a lot of jargon that is sometimes difficult to follow and breaks the narrative flow and quite claustrophobic on occasion, the novel is still very innovative with an original setting and interesting characters - Caleb Ross, the Landlord of Mars, a former sergeant who reincarnates at 24 every time he dies with little memories of his previous lives, Ambera Chen aka "Tharsis" from her middle of nowhere homestead, a young lieutenant in the Arran (the Martian civilization) army who gets entangled by chance in all and through whose eyes we travel from one end of the Heliosphere to another, major Lanin, a dutiful Arran officer, the previous commander of Tharsis and of the newly reincarnated Landlord, tDaer, the newest incarnation of the genetic Daer line of Iapetus, a young idealistic researcher who is willing to skirt the Accords and defy the Landlords to show humanity the way towards the paradise promised by Arcna, a Jovian princeling in for money and power, another Jovian but a fanatic follower of Arcna's teaching and of course various other Landlords who interact with the main characters in colorful locations throughout the Heliosphere.
With an ending that is partly a cliffhanger, and partly a resolution of the main plot, The Lighthouse of Kuiper is worth persevering through, ignoring the jargon when necessary as most of it becomes clearer as the novel progresses as it is packed with interesting ideas, world-building characters, past history and of course adventure, fights, tragedy, and even a little romance.
Highly recommended and hopefully the immediate sequel The Ariums of Earth will be as good as this one
November 15, 2023
The Lighthouse of Kuiper is a weird entry into the world of Sci Fi but weird in a good way! I think the other reviews have made it clear that this is a novel you will either love or give up on. My only advice to those that want to give the book a chance is to keep an open mind and to read the trilogy in its entirety. One of my biggest gripes with publishing these days is the need for everything to be a trilogy. As someone who reads a lot (the memory can only remember so much!!) it can be a tad confusing to recall key details from part a story when the second and third parts are released over a period of years. My only complaint with the Lighthouse of Kuiper is the lack of a guide (perhaps at the beginning or end of the back) that explains some of the concepts that EM Rensing has created and a dramatis personae. So what did I like about this book? Set in the far future, Earth has been abandoned and genetic drifting (natural and manipulated) has left what is left of humanity struggling to survive. With an uneasy peace existing amongst the various planets and moons a message from the Kuiper belt, from something long believed dead threatens to shatter that very peace. This is hard, military science fiction at its finest.
November 8, 2022
Imaginative in story, setting, and lexicon: a female military officer explores a mysterious, decaying outpost in space.
“ …’They might disdain the more mythic aspects, but they love (Arcna’s) ideas.’ (Olin) snorted. ‘Think she’s out there, building a better breed of transhuman, or not-human, or whatever.’ (Tharsis) rolled her eyes. ‘Aren’t we all not-human these days?’ “
“Tharsis found herself trailing… the dark shapes of whatever it was that the cat was after. She heard laughter from that figure and screeching rage from the cat, and of the two, the animal’s voice carried more humanity in it.”
“ …’They might disdain the more mythic aspects, but they love (Arcna’s) ideas.’ (Olin) snorted. ‘Think she’s out there, building a better breed of transhuman, or not-human, or whatever.’ (Tharsis) rolled her eyes. ‘Aren’t we all not-human these days?’ “
“Tharsis found herself trailing… the dark shapes of whatever it was that the cat was after. She heard laughter from that figure and screeching rage from the cat, and of the two, the animal’s voice carried more humanity in it.”
November 4, 2022
A fresh new voice in sci-fi
This first installment in the Hemisphere trilogy paints a vivid speculative future of humanity as it spreads throughout our solar system. The author grabs you from the first page and keeps pulling you through this epic story right up to the end. The gripping narrative allows the reader time to digest the universe's terminology without feeling bogged down. Rensing gives the reader room to connect to the characters and become fully invested in their journeys. I'm looking forward to seeing where she takes us in book two.
This first installment in the Hemisphere trilogy paints a vivid speculative future of humanity as it spreads throughout our solar system. The author grabs you from the first page and keeps pulling you through this epic story right up to the end. The gripping narrative allows the reader time to digest the universe's terminology without feeling bogged down. Rensing gives the reader room to connect to the characters and become fully invested in their journeys. I'm looking forward to seeing where she takes us in book two.
May 16, 2023
This book has a really great premise and from the description I thought I was going to love this but sadly I didn't. Although the writing is great I couldn't get engaged with this storyline or the characters. I think a lof of people will love tis as its military sci-fi but it just wasn't a hit for me.
May 22, 2023
Received a NetGalley copy for review. Very ambitious world building, sadly let down by dense dialogue and unexplained terminology, not to mention overuse of 'scat'. Left me feeling I'd missed a previous volume. The author offers a very fresh voice in hard scifi and I look forward to further works from E.M Rensing.
May 6, 2023
Difficult for me to fully get into and once things got up and going I had a hard time really caring about anything that was going on at all. Very middle of the road sci fi fare.
May 16, 2023
I love this book!
Characters were believable and well-developed. Some different vocabulary to get used to, but not onerous. Looking forward to the next one!
Characters were believable and well-developed. Some different vocabulary to get used to, but not onerous. Looking forward to the next one!
December 31, 2025
Tried to get into it, but it wasn't my cup of sci-fi tea.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews