- Hardcover: 480 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; 4th Impression edition (17 April 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0575077174
- ISBN-13: 978-0575077171
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.8 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 289,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
House of Suns
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Product Description
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 )
"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 )
Dave Golder, BBC FOCUS
"A crisper style that recalls hard SF from the '60s and '70s. This nod to the past seems fresh and new."
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Future Human Immortals Roam the Milky Way!,
By Luc Andre Mandeville (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: House of Suns (Gollancz S.F.) (Hardcover)
This excellent novel has a short story prequel, unfortunately absent from this volume: 'The Thousandth Night'. It is available in Gardner Dozois One Million A.D. anthology. As for House of Suns, in my humble opinion, this is Reynolds' best novel to date. Future immortal clones of a person explore the Milky Way and meet to reconvene every 200,000 years. Reynolds has this unique ability to render his science as captivating as the story itself. Read Thousandth Night first!
29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A slow burning, millenia spanning novel,
By
This review is from: House of Suns (Gollancz S.F.) (Hardcover)
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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Should have been brilliant,
By
This review is from: House of Suns (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
This really should have been an amazing book, this is the first I have read from Reynolds and probably won't be my last simply due to his terrific ideas. His imagination is astounding, probably the most creative per page count book I have read so far. There are some issues however, his preference for absolute realism (no faster than light) had it's advantages but it also comes with some drawbacks, the main being that so much time passes, civilisations rise and fall in the space of a few sentences, there is no real emotional attachment to what happens in the time frame of events we watch unfold. So the Line (civilisation) could be wiped out, what does it matter... not a fat lot in the great scheme of things, unfortunately this is what the no faster than light travel made me feel. Of course some well fleshed out characters could counter balance this, no such joy here either, the main 2 characters are really quite dull despite being in love, some more emotional attachment, friction between the two wouldn't have gone amiss. I understand that they are clones of the same person but I thought there would be multiple facets of this personality manifesting in the clones. Many of the supporting characters were much more interesting.
The game Palatial was brilliant, I just wish it had more bearing on events later. There is an interesting character early on who dies far too soon... massive info dumps at the end of the book left me more confused than anything. Synchromesh, stasis, time dilation etc was really well written and used. Overall a very up and down book, brilliant ideas let down by poor characterisation and lack of emotional attachment. I'm not sure how to resolve the issue of no faster than light though.
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