House of Suns

"I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp.

I was a girl then, a single individual called Abigail Gentian."

This is such a fantastic novel! It explores memory, identity, culpability, love among two clones of the same person, intimacy, gender, human potential, and VAST time frames (while staying closely with the main characters). Its setting is the entire galaxy and beyond, it has a good murder mystery, fantastic other kinds of mysteries, creepy but lovable AIs, convincing villains who have a point, weird alien humans of the far future, action scenes in space, tense hide-and-seek, show more *beautiful prose*, memorable characters - I loved it SO MUCH.

I wish every book was like this and I can't wait to read more Alastair Reynolds. I've been making myself wait and try other new-to-me authors that many people think are great but really I'm just chomping at the bit to read more Reynolds. I just hope the rest of his books come close to this one.

If you absolutely want to hear a quibble because nothing can be *that* deliciously perfect: I could have done without the chase scene at the end, but the 'wah-wah-where-is-the-action' crowd loved that scene in particular, so I guess it was the correct choice to include it. I would have preferred even *more* philosophizing and exploring these cool ideas even further, because Reynolds's thoughts are actually really fascinating and worth thinking about. But the chase scene also shows that he knows what he's doing and how to appeal to a vast array of different kinds of reader, so I don't mind it at all. In addition, it was actually a tense chase scene and I'm the girl who always falls asleep during car chases in movies, so that says a lot. Other quibbles? I was so invested in the present-day story line and mysteries that I sometimes didn't want to go into one of the childhood flashbacks - but that feeling always vanished right away, and the flashbacks were deeply meaningful in the way this memory tried to communicate a deleted and suppressed *other* memory (and answer to one of the mysteries) in symbolic form. So brilliant! So freaking beautiful! So no, I can't really find any flaw with this book and can find so much genius instead.

I'm so happy this is a prolific author who's written a lot of other books already, so I've got a lot to look forward to. show less

Alastair Reynolds has the rare ability to make vast expanses of time and space appear both visceral and comprehensible. He also adeptly bridges the gap between the limited scale of individual characters and such dizzying expanses. These skills are central to the impact of all his space operas, not least 'House of Suns'. The plot encompasses millions of years and ranges across the Milky Way and beyond. It follows several clones from the Gentian line, a dynasty comprising a thousand slightly different copies of a woman called Abigail Gentian. These clones separately circumnavigate the galaxy, investigating new civilisations that have sprung up, then reunite periodically to share memories. They have been doing this for millions of years, show more but each individual clone has only experienced a fraction of that time. While travelling between stars and planets, they can put themselves in stasis or cryogenic suspension. In this astonishing post-scarcity future, technology allows supernovas to be contained, planets wholly terraformed, and immortality achieved in multiple ways. However, spaceships still cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Two clones, Campion and Purslane, begin the novel concerned that they're running late for a Gentian reunion. It is amusing to find that immortality and technological near-omnipotence do not prevent posthumans procrastinating.

As is perhaps inevitable in such a distant and seemingly unfamiliar future, 'House of Suns' takes a little time, around a hundred pages, to establish its setting and characters before the plot really gets going. This initial establishment and exploration is compelling enough and the rest of the book proceeds at a tense, exciting pace. The splitting of perspective between Campion and Purslane works well, as they are obviously different characters and a couple to boot, yet retain a noticeable similarity. The concept of shatterlings and the word itself are ingenious. I was particularly pleased by the detail that shatterling is used as a term of endearment. Reynolds explores the antecedents of the Gentian line via flashbacks, which are well-integrated into the narrative. Meanwhile, Campion and Purslane get involved in a dangerous mystery, pulling them into an epic chase across the galaxy and conflict with AIs, known as Machine People.

In addition to an excellent plot, 'House of Suns' has some memorably fantastic concepts. Perhaps my favourite was the Vigilance, which Campion visits. These secretive archivists have attained immortality by very slowly growing larger and larger. When Campion visits them, he has to wait many years for admittance to the archive. Once allowed in, to share all his memory data (known charmingly as a 'trove') he is swallowed by one of them and travels through their digestive tract! This peculiar process is treated with a calmness that makes it seem rather reasonable. Similarly, there is a superb combination of quietness and tension to the conflict on board Purslane's ship Silver Wings once it has been hijacked by two Machine People. Purslane's hoarding of smaller spaceships in the hold of Silver Wings pays off, as she and Hesperus take shelter within one of them. The whole chase towards the Stardam and beyond is superbly described.

I did not enjoy every detail in the book, however. I remain confused as to the role of Dr. Meninx, who did little except complain constantly and then die in a way that cast unfounded suspicion upon Hesperus. There is also an extended sequence of torture, in which a person is cut into slices while still conscious. That made me feel like I was reading the obligatory torture portion of a Culture novel and I didn't appreciate it. On the other hand, I really liked the ending. It's especially difficult to end a sprawling space opera in a satisfactory fashion, bringing the character journeys to an end while providing resolution to the intergalactic peril. After following Purslane through a wormhole, Campion does not find the expected angry army of robots ready to invade. Instead, he encounters one Machine Person, a being made of glass marbles who bears no grudge towards him. He is then reunited with Hesperus, who has seemingly sacrificed himself to save Purslane. I liked the implication that after vast spans of time, machine people had stopped caring about humanity and moved past the carelessly genocidal attitude taken by the first AIs. It was also emotionally pleasing to find the two shatterlings reunited, without it being overly sentimental. The relationship between Purslane and Campion is considered taboo by the rest of their line as it's romantic and long-term, whereas a brief sexual liaison would be overlooked. They have an endearing dynamic that acts as one motivator of their actions without excluding others, such as intellectual curiosity, line protocol, and friendship with Hesperus.

Alastair Reynolds is a reliably high-quality hard sci-fi writer and I really enjoyed 'House of Suns'. It explores themes of how memory and tribal loyalty evolve and erode over time to very interesting effect, within a unique and striking future world. show less

I hadn't previously read anything by the successful contemporary sf author Alastair Reynolds, and rather than start with any of the series books for which he is perhaps better known, I read the standalone House of Suns. This doorstop novel is a far-future space opera centered on a "shatterling line," i.e. a star-faring community of immortal clones, capable of stellar engineering, who explore the galaxy individually and rejoin to pool their knowledge and memories at intervals of many thousands of years.

(Reynolds is about my age, and I wondered at one point in this book if it had been partly inspired by a childhood reception of the mysterious allusions to the 'Clone Wars' in the 1977 Star Wars film, before those were fleshed out into the show more typically disappointing fare of the later development of that franchise.)

There are three characters with narration duties. At the start, and at wide intervals throughout, a much earlier story is told by Abigail Gentian, founder and clone parent of the House of Flowers, or Gentian Line of shatterlings. Otherwise, the narrative voice alternates chapter-by-chapter between a pair of incestuous Gentians in a "present" setting millions of years later.

Important to the plot and the setting of the book are a race of autonomous "Machine People" who vastly surpass humans in physical and mental capabilities at the individual level. I thought it a little odd that these were often referred to as "robots" as if the term were not pejorative. There are allusions early in the book to an interstellar human faction ("human" is used to include a wide range of post- and trans- humanity) called the Disavowers, who are antagonistic to the Machine People, but this notion is never fully developed.

In reviews and commentary on this book, I have seen it characterized as "hard" science fiction. Reynolds certainly has the scientific chops to write hard sf, but this story is set amidst technology so very advanced beyond our immediate ambitions, and so speculative, that it read as fairly fantastic to me. Only the willingness to take seriously the relativistic limitations on interstellar polity seemed "hard." The stasis technology used for "abeyance" and "chronomesh" time drugs in particular seemed almost as hand-wavy as superluminal jump drives.

In its galactic scope and range of humanity-stretching concepts, this novel most reminded me of two other space operas, Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and MacLeod's Engine City. I did enjoy it, but it didn't deliver an itch to seek out and read more of Reynolds' work immediately. show less

Reynolds, Alastair. House of Suns. Gollancz, 2008.
House of Suns is a flawed classic. The first edition, listed at 512 pages, reads as if it were twice that long. Alastair Reynolds has given us a book where one had better enjoy the trip because the destination is never quite the point. It is a baroque masterpiece of deed-future worldbuilding. Cloned people circle the galaxy at near-light speed, rendezvousing for family reunions every eon or two. They watch civilizations rise, fall, and mutate. There are civilizations of machine people that may predate humanity. And, oh yes, the Andromeda galaxy has mysteriously disappeared. Layered on all this is a love triangle between a male and female clone of the original Abigail Gentian and show more Hesperus, a golden robot who is more than he seems. It is a vision that would be right at home in the mythopoeic universes of Roger Zelazny and Cordwainer Smith. Unfortunately, it lacks a clear narrative line, exacerbated by a switching point of view. Settle back and read it anyway. 4 stars. show less

Some people say that you learn something from every book you read. If that's true, "House of Suns" taught me that hard science fiction might not be my cup of tea. As others have noted, Reynolds does a good job of demonstrating the very enormity of both space and time. His characters, who are often millions of years old, often place themselves in stasis for centuries at a time while their ships carry them across the unfathomable distances that separate the stars while civilizations rise and fall around them with depressing regularity. They can essentially speed up and slow down time as they see fit, but also face the problem of trying to maintain coherent personalities while they sort through millions of years of communal memories. This show more is an interesting idea, and literature has touched on it before: we might consider Reynolds's characters to be hypertrophic versions of Clarissa Dalloway, who only had to organize six or so decades of experience during the course of a single afternoon. Still, Reynolds only skims the surface of this material without really exploring how this might affect human consciousness. It doesn't help that his own writing isn't any more than serviceable, and that his pacing is somewhat inconsistent: he seems to skip ahead during sequences that might bore some readers and the book's last few scenes seem rushed. "House of Suns" isn't a short book, but I think it'd take a few volumes to properly flesh out all of the ideas that Reynolds has introduced here. Reynolds doesn't seem to have the time, even if his characters might.

Another thing that bothered me about "House of Suns" was its universe's riotous abundance. Literature, like most of human life, is usually defined by its limitations, and one of those necessary limitations is material: there just isn't enough stuff for everyone, and it's unlikely to last forever. Jane Austen wouldn't have had a career if it was otherwise. In "House of Suns," though, the galaxy seems to have been completely colonized by a set of technologically advanced first-world civilizations, and most people can order up just about whatever they want from the nearest "maker," which organizes matter into anything you might need, be it a cool glass of white wine or a laser gun. This unbelievable prosperity seem to rob this narrative of much of its meaning, though. In a world where both death and poverty have been roundly defeated, how could anything that happened be taken particularly seriously? In short, the formless ennui that threatens some of ennui that threatens some of this novel's characters began to threaten me. I've seen some reviewers say that it was nice to read a contemporary science fiction tome that didn't assume that our future is necessarily dystopic, but I feel that "House of Suns" moves the goalposts – or redesigns the playing field – a bit too much.

"House of Suns" isn't completely without its admirable qualities, though. The author skilfully weaves in a storyline concerning the founder of a "line" of clones playing a medieval-themed virtual reality-style game into the book's central plot, and the book is briskly paced and fun to read, with space battles and galaxy-wide conspiratorial intrigue to spare. Its treatment of science is, as far as I can tell, relatively realistic, and Reynolds introduces a fine selection of post-human or quasi-human intelligences, interesting and beautiful alternatives to the sort of consciousness we're familiar with. Still, I suspect that I'll leave this one for the genre's real fans and beam back to literary fiction. I'm gonna leave these sorts of interstellar adventures to somebody else. show less

This is the best novel ever. It explores memory, identity, culpability, love among two clones of the same person, intimacy, gender, human potential, VAST time frames (while staying closely with the main characters), its setting is the entire galaxy and beyond, it has a great murder mystery, fantastic other mysteries, creepy but lovable AIs, convincing villains who have a point, weird alien humans of the far future, action scenes in space, tense hide-and-seek, *beautiful prose*, memorable characters - I loved it SO MUCH.

I wish every book was like this and I can't wait to read more Alastair Reynolds. I've been making myself wait and try other new-to-me authors that many people think are great but really I'm just chomping at the bit to show more read more Reynolds. I just hope the rest of his books come close to this one.

If you absolutely want to hear a quibble because nothing can be *that* deliciously perfect: I could have done without the chase scene at the end, but the 'wah-wah-where-is-the-action' crowd loved that scene in particular, so I guess it was the correct choice to include it. I would have preferred even *more* philosophizing and exploring these cool ideas even further, because Reynolds's thoughts are actually really fascinating and worth thinking about. But the chase scene also shows that he knows what he's doing and how to appeal to a vast array of different kinds of reader, so I don't mind it at all. In addition, it was actually a tense chase scene and I'm the girl who always falls asleep during car chases in movies, so that says a lot. Other quibbles? I was so invested in the present-day story line and mysteries that I sometimes didn't want to go into one of the childhood flashbacks - but that feeling always vanished right away, and the flashbacks were deeply meaningful in the way this memory tried to communicate a deleted and suppressed *other* memory (and answer to one of the mysteries) in symbolic form. So brilliant! So freaking beautiful! So no, I can't really find any flaw with this book and can find so much genius instead.

I'm so happy this is a prolific author who's written a lot of other books already, so I've got a lot to look forward to. show less

I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp. Thus begins the life of Abigail Gentian, who later makes 1000 male and female clones of herself who set off to explore the universe. Six million years later, much of it spent in stasis or cryo chambers while travelling the galaxy, two of her clones, Purslane and Campion, female and male clones now in love, against the rules, are running over 50 years behind en route to their 200,000 year line reunion. While on their way they receive an encoded message informing them that almost all or their line has been decimated by an unprecedented attack. show more Thus begins their quest to save some of their fellow clones and determine just who is behind this attack and why. As the mystery unfolds it is much more complex and interwoven with their pasts than they had imagined.

This is a great book for the science fiction fan who is fine with humans morphing into rather unbelievable forms, such as centaurs on one planet, immortal beings who live forever floating together in space in astronomically large suits where it can take them years to make a decision because their nerves are so vast it takes so long for signals to pass from their brains to their bodies, where there is machine sentience, where humans can clone themselves into two different sexes, etc.

At the beginning of each section we read about Abigail’s story when she was one person, and the rest of the story is told from two first person view points, Purslane’s and Campion’s.

I got this book because I loved the first sentence, which is quoted above. I liked the first chapter a great deal, but the book went downhill to only a three stars level of liking very quickly for me for several reasons. One is that despite the vast amount of time involved, some of this science fiction defies all logic (I haven’t described it all). For example, there are certain biological limitations that cannot be overcome by cloning. I didn’t care much for either Purslane or Campion and that was not solely because I have difficulty with the incestuous nature of their relationship, but more that I didn’t find either of them likable enough. I did like Hesperus a great deal. Hesperus is a machine person rescued on their way to the failed reunion who is gravely injured during their attempts to rescue any surviving clones of their Gentian line. In fact, one of the reasons I continued reading was to find out what happened to him. The other was that the writing was good enough that I really wanted to stay with it to see how the mystery was resolved. I did stay up late two nights in a row to finish, but not more than an hour or so after my bedtime. show less