House of Suns
by Alastair Reynolds
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alastair ReynoldsEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-06-02
ISBN: 0441017177
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Ace Hardcover
Book Reviews of House of Suns
Book Review: Reynolds lightens up a bit in HOUSE OF SUNS
Summary: 4 Stars
Alastair Reynolds made a name for himself writing dark, violent, hard-edged sci-fi set in a deeply-textured, gritty universe, centering on brutal choices made by deeply flawed people under harrowing circumstances. You might think a novel that revolves around guilt and vengeance, begins with a mass murder and then moves on to vastly greater atrocities would fit easily into his oeuvre ... but it doesn't. Despite wanton slaughter, intense space battles, multiple assassination attempts, several shootouts, more space battles, and even the threat of human extinction, HOUSE OF SUNS is an almost-light-hearted romantic heroic space opera murder mystery. Really.
Six million years ago, a young woman named Abigail Gentian used her family resources to grow 999 adult human bodies -- roughly half of them male, none of them from her own DNA -- and implanted them with all of her memories. She intended each of these "shatterlings" to travel the galaxy in perpetuity, acting as a communication system and collective memory for planet-based human colonies and empires that would otherwise fall gradually into isolation. Since each of the shatterlings is -- or at least was -- Abigail, they shared the same desire. She also decreed that her shatterlings would come together once every 200,000 years -- roughly enough time to make a circuit of the galaxy at relativistic speeds -- to share memories and renew their common identity.
It was at one of these gatherings that the murderers struck. Fortuitously, shatterlings Campion and Purslane were running late and missed the attack. Campion, a male shatterling, is a good-hearted nonconformist reminiscent of Reynolds' Conjoiner Nevil Clavain. Purslane, a female shatterling, is, in violation of Gentian tradition, Campion's lover and a bit of a bad grrrl. The couple readily take up the challenge of determining who has attacked the Gentian line and why.
As I suggested above, HOUSE OF SUNS is much broader in its strokes and pulpier in its approach than Reynolds readers are accustomed to. Still, readers who are drawn to Reynolds because of his intensity, his attention to detail, and his attraction to morally ambiguous figures and choices will find that these qualities are not absent, only muted. The result is a read that is considerably more entertaining and engaging than, say, PUSHING ICE, but not nearly as dark and deep as, say, CHASM CITY.
Although HOUSE OF SUNS is in some sense a sequel to the novella "Thousandth Night," it is not necessary to read the novella to enjoy the novel ... although those who did enjoy the novella will be pleased with the novel. N.B.: There are a number of small inconsistencies between the novel and the novella, the most glaring of which involves a character who died heroically in the novella and yet is still alive in the novel ... until he again dies heroically, albeit in an entirely different context.
Bottom line: This is a good but not outstanding novel by one of the best authors writing sci-fi today.
Summary of House of Suns
Six million years ago, at the dawn of the star-faring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones, which she called shatterlings. She sent them out into the galaxy to observe and document the rise and fall of countless human empires. Since then, every two hundred thousand years, they gather to exchange news and memories of their travels.Only this millennium there is no gathering. Someone is eliminating the Gentian line. And Campion and Purslane-two shatterlings who have fallen in love and shared forbidden experiences- must determine exactly who, or what, their enemy is, before they are wiped out of existence.
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