Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1010 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 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 )

"I abandoned science fiction years ago, except for the Discworld books, but a friend insisted I read House Of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. I tried it, became hooked, and have now read everything he's written. Alastair Reynolds is an astrophysicist, so he knows his stuff, but what really distinguishes him is a galaxy-sized imagination allied to a real story-telling ability." (Bernard Cornwell )

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

Customer Reviews

Reynolds for the Booker, why not?
I have just finished House of Suns and I think that it may be one of the finest pieces of literature I have ever read.

It is quite simply a beautiful novel. It's sci-fi context is irrelevant to its beauty and I almost wish that he had written the novel about contemporary shatterlings travelling the world and gaining experiences. Maybe if the setting had been New York and not Neume then this book would be sitting in the sci-fi best sellers and the generic fiction top ten lists.

This book is a massive shift from the revelation space books. Don't get me wrong, I have read them all, but House of Suns is the sum of all of Mr Reynolds previous writing. It is funny, witty and breathtaking but and this is the killer, it is extraordinarly well written.

As I read it the most obvious comparable author was Haruki Murakami. The way Mr Reynolds takes modern themes such as loss and alienation and mixes them with humour and wonder is sublime.

This is not just good sci-fi this is wonderful story telling.

How do you nominate a book for the Man Booker?

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.

A matter of taste.
Just want to write a short review for those who have become fans of Reynold's sublime Space Operas----This is a new direction from most of his novels. Judging by the other reviews this change in tack (it's not realy THAT spectacular a change) is not to the taste of some-but very much to the tase of others. I add my voice to those who think "House of Suns" it is one of his best. The plotting is magnificently inventive (no change there!)Personally I found it almost impossible to put down and I like that in a book!The protagonists are fascinating and the writing at times surpasses that of his earlier work. If you want to read the cream of contemporary Sci-Fi--this is for you.