Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1961 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-17
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

Anthony Brown, STARBURST
"Reynolds retains a highly readable style which allows him to dip into solid technology without losing the pace and he fleshes out a convincing background to his world."

Review
'Reynolds injects a good old fashioned sense of wonder into his science fiction by combining a story of epic scale with a series of awe-inspiring revelations, each more breathtaking than the last. The finale is thrilling, moving and humane. This is Reynolds' best novel to date." (Eric Brown THE GUARDIAN )

"Reynolds retains a highly readable style which allows him to dip into solid technology without losing the pace and he fleshes out a convincing background to his world." (Anthony Brown STARBURST )

"A crisper style that recalls hard SF from the '60s and '70s. This nod to the past seems fresh and new." (Dave Golder BBC FOCUS )

"A splendid example of SF as the literature of ideas, and depsite its longueurs is another triumph for Reynolds." (Jes Bickham DEATHRAY )

"The book's final revelations are near perfectly judged. Ultimately it's this that gives his novel real heart and soul - an infinitely rarer commodity than any amount of self-consciously insouciant cool." (Jonathan Wright SFX )

"His writing is solid, his characterisation intriguing; a fine entry for Reynolds." (SCi FI NOW )

"Reynolds has written a hugely entertaining extrapolation of contemporary mores: a far-flung comedy of manners, with fascinating precedents. This is warm hearted science fiction with big ideas that are easy to follow. House of Suns might well be the author's most human novel to date." (INTERZONE )

"Reynolds understands and uses hard science, giving an aura of plausibility to his wildest flights of fancy. As well as visionary brilliance, Reynolds also supplies a knock-your-socks-off ending. A thrilling, mind-boggling adventure." (Lisa Tuttle THE TIMES )

"He remains as devoted as ever to innovative, hard sf, gigantic, family-sized space opera. What ensues is a chase story across vast tracts of both time and space, veering closer to Iain M Banks's territory than Reynolds's earlier books ventured. Like its technology, when it starts moving, it moves at one hell of a clip." (Andrew McKie THE TELEGRAPH )

"As well as being an intelligent writer, he shows that he has an awful lot of heart." (Roz Kaveney TIME OUT )

Jes Bickham, DEATHRAY
"A splendid example of SF as the literature of ideas, and depsite its longueurs is another triumph for Reynolds."

Customer Reviews

Pretty amazing, but is it classic Reynolds?
This is a great book by any standards, though I do wonder whether it's classic Reynolds. It takes place over eons of objective time, but it's really just a chase / revenge / redemption story arc - with far too much time setting the scene.

The narrative is in the first person between the two main characters and that runs as a bit of a love story. This is interspersed with the narrative of another character (no spoilers), which is intriguing at the start, then an interruption in the middle that made me stop and put the book down, until at the end it really did come together with the main story.

That in itself is telling. I felt I could easily put the book down at those points. They were coffee breaks in what is usually a full on juggernaut-type experience. The only benefit they served was that I felt I'd not sped through it and left hanging until the next novel (yes, I'm really that much of a Reynolds fan).

However I didn't get the feeling of awe that I usually do with Reynolds. Something that left me feel a little cheated or short changed. The awe creeps in with the scale of the story, though it doesn't come crashing down on you - more like one big idea and a few smaller ones that interplay than a mass of ideas that blow your mind.

It would be interesting to see whether his next work builds on this or branches out for pastures new.

Having said that, it is a finely crafted work and a smashing read. Great book, read it, enjoy it, but not the best in the Reynolds stable. For that, Amazon would need a sixth star.

A slow burning, millenia spanning novel
Purslane and Campion are two Gentian shatterlings from the House of Flowers, two of a thousand clones of Abigail Gentian who left the solar system around the year 3000 to travel and explore the galaxy. All shatterlings meet up for their thousand nights reunion during which they share memories of what they have experienced.

Six million years have passed since the first ships left the solar system and due to the technology available the shatterlings are effectively immortal. They can pass the hundreds of years travelling between star systems in stasis and experience anything the galaxy has to offer.

On their belated way to the next reunion, Campion and Purslane receive a message warning them not to enter the chosen system and to flee to a designated safe system. The Gentian line were ambushed, almost their entire number wiped out and only a few dozen managing to escape and make their way to Neume where they await any stragglers.

Why does someone want the Gentian Shatterlings dead? Is there a traitor in their midst that helped this atrocity? And what exactly is the House of Suns?

This is the story we follow in House of Suns. Travelling with Campion and Purslane while they visit some systems on their way to the reunion, the aftermath of the attack and the events that follow. The first thing that you need to get used to is the timeframe of the novel. As all travel is done at sub-light speeds, with ftl not possible, the events of travelling between systems is done in tens and hundreds of years of subjective time. Once you get the hang of this it's easy enough to focus on the story without thinking of anything outside of it, unless it's mentioned within the narrative.

The story flows along quite well and is well written, probably one of Reynolds' best to date. Parts of the story feel like self contained short stories, particularly the early sections, although everything in the book has a reason for being there. I was impressed with the scope of the story and the timeframes involved, although I didn't enjoy the novel as much as I was hoping for. I love Reynolds' short stories and have enjoyed a couple of his novels more than this one and really hoped it would deliver more than it did.

I can't really fault the novel, it's just my tastes that meant I enjoyed it less than I hoped. There was no real feeling of having to read on, no urgency at all. Perhaps that is the result of having the narrative and background over hundreds, thousands and millions of years. A slow burner more than a page turner.

Losing his way ?
Reynolds has created another little macrocosm of characters for his readers - a family of parthenogenic clones exploring the galaxy for its own sake, and as you can probably guess, it's not quite fluffy kittens and ice-cream - Reynolds does like his maybe-dangerous-maybe-not characters.

As usual, Reynolds' writing is top-notch, but I felt the final ending was a little inconclusive this time. It's also hard to say whether or not this series is going anywhere (probably not; look at Pushing Ice). Ultimately, I quite enjoyed this book; Reynolds doesn't disappoint - until you read the very the last page. I also wasn't too fond of the "Palatial" interludes - in fact, I started skipping them, only to find that as I feared, they contained an important plot element. I didn't like this at all, since I have fairly strong feelings that sci-fi is sci-fi, fantasy is fantasy, and the two are very different animals which absolutely should not interbreed.

Worth a look, but maybe you should wait for the paperback - which will only be a couple of quid cheaper, mind.