If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Dr. Strangelove in Colour: "House of Suns" by Alastair ReynoldsWhen I was in high-school in the 80's, a bunch of hippy drama students came in and told us we were going to travel through time. They took us into a tent which had been set up in the school hall and told us to close or eyes and concentrate for a minute. When that time was up, they took us out of the tent and started expressively wandering around the school hall, exclaiming

I loved the hopefulness of this grand conception of humanity in the far future. I was surprised it worked so well for me as there is so much uncertainty about human survival on the near term that I figured speculation on a timescale would feel fairly meaningless. For example, I just couldn’t relate to the spiritual beings of Well’s “Time Machine”, the Eloi, and I was weirded out by the remnant human society clinging to a distant future existence in Benford’s “Great Sky River.” Here we have a lin...

Clone family meeting galactically gone wrong.One of Reynolds´single novels, it deals with immortality, childhood trauma through alternative upbringing involving simulations and AIs, an option how conglomerates could evolve, machine intelligence in the form of old and new robots, a crime in the past, future torture methods, and thereby unites anything that makes Sci-Fi great.Childhood memories have already played an essential role in Chasm City, where it was part of showing the special attitude a...

Right after finishing, I declared this may be my favourite read, since I first came across Pride and Prejudice two decades ago, which means a lot, trust me. Don't worry though, this is NOTHING like Pride and Prejudice.House of Suns is something special. Filled with wonders and surprises. A story spanning millions of years and several galaxies. It took me a few chapters to wrap my head around the world; it's a lot to take in at first. Afterwards, I couldn't put it down. I just ploughed through, s...

I meant to take it easy, but ended up blowing through the second half of this book in just 3 days. The pages just kept on turning by themselves, and I didn't get much sleep.Woke up this morning and was like But seriously. What year is it?This is not a review because I don't have enough science in me to understand it or to begin diving in and deconstructing it, but I did enjoy it very much and it's easily one of the best books I've read this year, maybe even this millennium. Will have to return f...

The best science fiction book I have ever read. That's all I'm going to say, that's all that needs to be said. The best science fiction book I have ever read.

NEW Review, Written After ReadingComment #25 onwards was made after adding this section.Good old-fashioned futuristic adventure at its best. Intelligent, well-written escapism about encounters between advanced human intelligences and even more advanced machine intelligences.Reynolds often writes novels with three-strands, set in different worlds and eons, that gradually come together. This is a simpler, single, story, but it's epic in time and distance. There is adventure, love and loyalty, atta...

"I had already seen dozens of empires come and go, blossoming and fading like lilies on a pond, over and over, seasons without end. Many of those empires were benevolent and welcoming, but others were inimical to all outside influences. It made no difference to their longevity. The kind empires withered and waned as quickly as the hostile ones." Epic!The above passage from House of Suns serves to illustrate the author's grandiose scheme for this book. The story spans millions of years a

When Barnes and Noble still only selled a hardcover version of this book a few years ago, I read the blurb on the inside cover and was like wtf? The story line seemed like too much even for me, and even after I was still giddy from plowing through the excellent Revelation Space series Reynolds is famous for. The idea of reading a bizarre story about cloned male and female "shatterlings" of a single person that travel in "circuits" around the galaxy (which last roughly, oh about 200,000 years or

"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 th...

After reading some really awesome reviews from Cecily and Apatt, and despite the fact that I've already read ten of his novels and short story collections, I've been feeling quite ashamed that I still hadn't read this well-regarded novel. So I sat my butt down and made it my eleventh. :)Could I possibly be disappointed at this point? Nope. At least, not for the sheer scale and scope of this post-humanity romp of over 6 million years, where a certain girl named Abigail clones herself and her mind...

Words can't describe how much I love this book! The quality of the writing in the first chapter gripped me and wouldnt let me stop reading. It is a fabulous scifi space opera with fantastic characters you root for. The most impressive thing is the world building, and how the complex science becomes understandable and readable in a way that you don't normally find in these types of books.Between discovering Reynolds and Banks, I feel like I'm in my own scifi novel Renaissance!

House of Suns: Truly epic time scales, but characters also shineOriginally posted at Fantasy LiteratureThis is the first Alastair Reynolds’ book I’ve read not set in his REVELATION SPACE series, and many of his fans claim it’s his best book. I’d have to say it is pretty impressive, dealing with deep time scales rarely seen for any but the most epic hard SF books. What’s unique about House of Suns is not simply that the story spans hundreds of thousands of years, but that the characters actually

Surprisingly uninteresting.(Un)profound thoughts on genre: every genre has its icons, and Reynolds seems to be one of science fiction's favorites, with at least sixteen books and many, many, more shorts and novellas. With a PhD in astrophysics, he even has the professional cred in science. But can he write? The Dan 2.Ω and carol. jury is still out on that one. I can tell you that he is in desperate need of editing. I've been finding myself asking, are genre icons too big to fail? Everyone in-gen...

One of the best science fiction novels that I’ve read in a long time. A truly epic journey. Enjoyed the characters, the quality of the writing, and the dramatic suspenseful plot, which is essentially a mystery. A who- and why-dunnit. I really don’t want to give anything away, so I'll only say...if you enjoy grand sci fi, this is highly recommended.

Others have covered the plotline and central conceits of the novel very well, so I will forbear. The plot is excellent, as are the ideas. What sets House of Suns far apart from other space operas is the sheer scope and scale of the thing and the fact that the immensity of it all does not drown the beautiful humanity displayed by the main characters, Campion and Purslane, two clones of the Gentian line who have been illicitly involved in a forbidden relationship with one another.When I was a kid,...

Posted at Heradas ReviewThis is my first Alastair Reynolds standalone novel. Having previously absorbed everything remotely related to his Revelation Space series over the last few years, I wanted to dip my toes into some of his one-off writing before digging into his newer series work. For some reason this book has been out of print in the US for a few years, making a physical copy a little tedious to come by, but I did eventually find one. Come on ACE, it’s time for a reprint!Coming from the R...

After reading House of Suns, I must resist the urge to just binge read everything Alistair Reynolds has ever written over, and over. There are other fantastic books, and authors out there. Al's writing, though, speaks to me. I'm not one of those people obsessed with comparisons, "THIS IS THE BEST EVUR!!!!", but I will say at this point in my life, Al is my favorite author.Having read the short story "Thousandth Night" from "Beyond the Aquila Rift", I had a short introduction to the Gentian Line

So one of the biggest constraints of the space opera genre is answering the question of faster than light (FTL) travel. Star Trek and the Star Carrier series gets around it using a modification of the Alcubierre Drive. The Old Man's War series mucks around with alternate universes. The Expanse does a fantastic job adapting the Space Opera genre to just the solar system, obviating the need for faster than light travel.The House of Suns says screw it, we don't need no stinking FTL, and we're doing...