Fomalhaut was first colonised by the posthuman Quick, who established an archipelago of thistledown cities and edenic worldlets within the star's vast dust belt. Their peaceful, decadent civilisation was swiftly conquered by a band of ruthless, aggressive, unreconstructed humans who call themselves the True, then, a century before, the True beat back an advance party of Ghosts, a posthuman cult which colonised the nearby system of Beta Hydri after being driven from the Solar System a thousand years ago. Now the Ghosts have returned to Fomalhaut, to begin their end game: the conquest of its single gas giant planet, a captured interstellar wanderer far older than the rest of Fomalhaut's system. At its core is a sphere of hot metallic hydrogen with strange and powerful properties based on exotic quantum physics. The Quick believe it is inhabited by an ancient alien Mind; the True believe it can be developed into a weapon, and the Ghosts believe it can be transformed into a computational system so powerful it can reach into their past, collapse timelines, and fulfil the ancient prophecies of their founder.
In the Mouth of the Whale
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In the system of Fomalhaut, a war is being fought. The Quicks came long ago, refugees from the Solar System, technologically advanced and, for the moment, safe. The True arrived later, to find a declining civilisation and a system ripe for the taking. Then the Ghosts appeared, no longer human, unknowable, powerful and determined to drive out the Quick and the True. The battle continues, but the outcome is uncertain...
In a damaged and perilous Brazil, The Child lives with her mother and nursemaid, kept safe from the risks of the rainforest. Precocious and dangerous, her childhood will define the future. But control of her story has been lost, and she will find her own path through the darkness around her.
Isak and the Horse, in endless Hells as punishment for a failure they will never live down, receive a summons. A mission has been found for them, one which will lead them into the dangerous politics of the Fomalhaut system, and into the most deadly Hell of all. The Library has been compromised, and that impossibility might mean the end of the world
On the skin of the Whale, suspended far above the planet Cthuga's surface, the Quick slaves remotely control drones and bots but have no freedom of their own. Ori dreams of flight, but there is no escape from her slavery - until the Ghosts attack the Whale. In the ensuing battle she sees a sprite in the corner of her mind, and comes to the attention of someone - or something - with a deadly plan.
These three lives will intersect, because there is something at the centre of Cthuga, something dangerous and growing and powerful. Something that is worth fighting for. And it will change everybody's life.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.From the Back Cover
'Few writers conjure futures as convincingly as McAuley' Guardian
Humanity's future rests on the shoulders of a Child from the past, and she must never know of the battles being fought for her . . .
In the system of Fomalhaut, a war is being fought. The Quicks came long ago, refugees from the Solar System. The True arrived later, to find a declining civilisation and a system ripe for the taking. Then the Ghosts appeared, no longer human, unknowable, powerful and determined to drive out the Quick and the True. The battle continues, but the outcome is uncertain.
In a damaged and perilous Brazil, The Child lives with her mother and nursemaid, kept safe from the risks of the rainforest. Isak and the Horse, in endless Hells as punishment for a failure they will never live down, receive a summons. A mission has been found for them, one which will lead them into the most deadly Hell of all. On the skin of the Whale, suspended far above the planet Cthuga's surface, the Quick slaves have no freedom of their own. Ori dreams of flight, but there is no escape from her slavery - until the Ghosts attack the Whale.
These three lives will intersect, because there is something at the centre of Cthuga, something dangerous and growing and powerful. Something that is worth fighting for. And it will change everybody's life.
'Paul McAuley's balanced grasp of satire and literature, always a rare attribute in the writer of prose fiction, is combined with the equally rare ability to look at today's problems and know which are really problems, and what can be done about them' William Gibson
978 0 575 10075 6
£8.99
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a wonderful book, almost certainly the best novel I read this year, so it's a real disappointment to see it getting such indifferent and at times stupid reviews.
I'm sorry to admit that I'm sometimes more interested in plot than quality of writing, but even I noticed how outstanding McAuley's prose is here, with descriptive passages frequently achieving real beauty and poetry. The plot is both original and ruthless: the villains of the piece, the True, are utterly vile and despicable, yet the story is largely told from their perspective. It is impossible to find any single character to wholly identify with, all the "humans" in the story are to a greater or lesser extent alien from our perspective.
This is not a warm and cosy story, you get a real sense of the vast, immeasurable depths of space, and of how in trying to navigate them we could lose our own humanity.
I'm sorry to admit that I'm sometimes more interested in plot than quality of writing, but even I noticed how outstanding McAuley's prose is here, with descriptive passages frequently achieving real beauty and poetry. The plot is both original and ruthless: the villains of the piece, the True, are utterly vile and despicable, yet the story is largely told from their perspective. It is impossible to find any single character to wholly identify with, all the "humans" in the story are to a greater or lesser extent alien from our perspective.
This is not a warm and cosy story, you get a real sense of the vast, immeasurable depths of space, and of how in trying to navigate them we could lose our own humanity.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Awlbath
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Paul McAuley has an amazing imagination and this meaty tome has a great blend of exciting characters, old friends (lots of spoilers so make sure you read The Quiet War first) and fabulous concepts. It may go on too much but this is counterbalanced by its bulging story lines and sequential threads. I look forward to reading it again in short succession to The Quiet War as I think this would be a great pair of novels for a long journey.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Having read and enjoyed The Quiet War and Gardens of the sun I was expecting a follow-on narrative which took the tensions between the different Outer factions to a different locale. What I found were three narrative streams which seemed to have little to do with the preceding novels.
One thread was related. It seemed to cover the early life of Maria-Hong Owen's daughter Sri, who became a gene wizard in the previous two books. The other two threads appear not to refer back to anything but cover the growing war for Cthuga (Fomalhaut's gas giant) and the adventures of a pair of 'cyberspace hackers' from the 'Library', who have been a chance to redeem themselves, after an earlier failure, by finding two individuals who have disappeared while on an important mission in the Library.
The 'Library' I found unconvincing. The sense of wonder at the the gene- and habitat-engineering carries over from the earlier books but the 'virtual reality' hijinks is hardly much in advance of Gibson, and feels out of place here. Who needs inner space when outer space is available as infinite, real, real estate?
All is not wonderful in this post-human world. Bottom of the heap are the Quicks,who have had humanity's worst traits gene-engineered out, but unluckily for them, this has enabled their enslavement by the True, exo-skeleton-wearing old-style humans, unfortunately still wreaking havoc with those bad old traits. The True want to confirm a hypothesis that a 'mind' inhabits Cthuga but have to defend it against a third post-human clade, the Ghosts, who have an even crazier reason for wanting it. The 'Whale' of the novel's title is a giant True construct which reaches down into Cthuga's gravity well.
All this the reader needs to piece together. What I find worrying is what someone totally new to this 'universe' is going to make of it, as I struggled. Where are the introductory 'info-dumps'? Ironically, they appear and interrupt things at the end, way too late to save newcomers to this universe who may have given up long before.
Finally, this work seems to use more cliched sf elements than the first two novels and the originality that fueled them seems not to be being extended into new areas. There is also a bleakness about it, in that freedoms won in the preceding novels seem to be on the wane again....
One thread was related. It seemed to cover the early life of Maria-Hong Owen's daughter Sri, who became a gene wizard in the previous two books. The other two threads appear not to refer back to anything but cover the growing war for Cthuga (Fomalhaut's gas giant) and the adventures of a pair of 'cyberspace hackers' from the 'Library', who have been a chance to redeem themselves, after an earlier failure, by finding two individuals who have disappeared while on an important mission in the Library.
The 'Library' I found unconvincing. The sense of wonder at the the gene- and habitat-engineering carries over from the earlier books but the 'virtual reality' hijinks is hardly much in advance of Gibson, and feels out of place here. Who needs inner space when outer space is available as infinite, real, real estate?
All is not wonderful in this post-human world. Bottom of the heap are the Quicks,who have had humanity's worst traits gene-engineered out, but unluckily for them, this has enabled their enslavement by the True, exo-skeleton-wearing old-style humans, unfortunately still wreaking havoc with those bad old traits. The True want to confirm a hypothesis that a 'mind' inhabits Cthuga but have to defend it against a third post-human clade, the Ghosts, who have an even crazier reason for wanting it. The 'Whale' of the novel's title is a giant True construct which reaches down into Cthuga's gravity well.
All this the reader needs to piece together. What I find worrying is what someone totally new to this 'universe' is going to make of it, as I struggled. Where are the introductory 'info-dumps'? Ironically, they appear and interrupt things at the end, way too late to save newcomers to this universe who may have given up long before.
Finally, this work seems to use more cliched sf elements than the first two novels and the originality that fueled them seems not to be being extended into new areas. There is also a bleakness about it, in that freedoms won in the preceding novels seem to be on the wane again....
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rather disappointing addition to the series
Compared to the previous entries to the "Quiet War" series, this novel was something of a disappointment, definitely nowhere near as good as McAuley's other work. Read more
Published 3 months ago by just another customer
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not a Whale of a Tale
I have not read McAuley extensively, but enjoyed Pasquale's Angel and it's quasi steam-punk take on the Renaissance, and the first two instalments of The Quiet War series are great... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Charlie Quigley
2.0 out of 5 stars
in the mouth of a mouse
Paul McAuley is not a bad writer. Gardens of the Sun, Quite War, Eternal Light are enjoyable books. The ideas are top science fiction. Read more
Published 14 months ago by erik
4.0 out of 5 stars
Inventive and fun
If you love a story that is dependent upon characters with a wonderful spacey twist and a plotline that moves at a decent pace then this title by Paul McAuley is a tale that you... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Gareth Wilson - Falcata Times Blog
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