House of Suns

After my Culture binge I guess I didn't get enough space opera because I went straight to Reynolds. This book was sold to me as one of Reynold's best works, and a great book to decide if you want more. I think I can sign off on parts of that endorsement; this is a great story that definitely evokes Banks in the world building department and surpasses Banks when it comes to plotting and pacing. It is self contained and exquisite, and while I haven't read any of his other works I got the sense that this book really was the perfect taster for Reynolds.

That said I don't know if I am sold on Reynolds, this story was not any longer than a Culture novel but it didn't hit quite the same and felt long. I figured that a story about incestuous clones attending a galactic family reunion would be funnier, or at least bring along a little levity, but this is absolutely meat and potatoes sci-fi.

I did find the concept of shatterlings, 1000 male and female clones of one person made into immortal space faring explorers, to be iconic and wildly imaginative- if a little narcissistic and implausible. This book also gave us a little taste of Reynolds' belief in the hard limit of light speed, and his reasoning and extrapolation managed to make an entire galaxy feel stifling and small.

I still plan to read revelation space but I think I will kick that can down the road a bit.

This was really such a trip. A great book and one I would highly recommend to any fan of sci-fi. This is definitely what I'd classify as pretty dense sci-fi though, so if you're not familiar with the genre or not in the mood for it, this probably wouldn't be something you'd pick up.

The premise of this universe was just fascinating. We're here millions of years into the future, where the human scions of time long past have made clones of themselves called shatterling which, while biologically human, could persist for millions and millions of years, their duties to keep watch over the other emerging and falling civilisation around the Milky Way Galaxy. In particular, we are concerned with Campion and Purslane, two clones from the Line created from Abigail Gentian, the house from which cloning technology was invented in the first place. In rushing towards a Line reunion, Campion and Purslane pick up an unexpected guest from the Machine People (essentially robots), introducing himself as Hesperus and apparently with a bad case of amnesia.

This book isn't incredibly long but it felt like it, because there were so many things that happened. It probably also felt long because the chronology in this book is whack. In order to be spacefaring travellers, the shatterlings also have to reckon time on an astronomical scale. Interstellar travel takes light years and this book acknowledges it. They spend millenia traveling around the galaxy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the events of this book spans at least a million years, if not more. I'm an astronomy nut so I was pretty happy nerding about stuff like this, and the imagination of how humans might be able to overcome that hurdle in interstellar travel (in this book, by stasis technology that essentially slows time down for your body alone, so a hundred thousand years may pass in what you subjectively experience as a minute).

So I was intrigued by the premise and technology and universe that this book already set out, but I was also equally fascinated by the plot. We are introduced to Abigail Gentian at the beginning as a little girl, supposedly heiress of a large, rambling mansion, and whose only playmate is a mysterious little boy. We know she is the progenitor of the Gentian Line, to which our protagonists Campion and Purslane belong, but there're all sorts of questions raised about how she came about to create shatterlings in the first place, and how to connect the dots between Abigail and the creation of her Gentian Line.

The chapters in this book constantly shift between Campion and Purslane's perspectives, and I think it was deliberate that the author never explicitly mentioned whose point of view it was, and you had to infer that as the chapter went on. It wasn't confusing or difficult, but it certainly blurred the lines between Campion and Purslane, which I think was the point - they are clones after all. I didn't mind that change in perspectives, but it also drove home the slight unease I felt about Campion and Purslane's romance. It almost felt a bit... incestuous? Nevertheless, despite being clones, they were both distinct enough from each other that I was able to tell them apart most of the time.

Spoilery thoughts: I guess the reason why I wouldn't give this a straight 5 stars was because I thought there were a lot of questions not answered by the end, or a lot of loopholes in the explanations. My hype for this book started fading once we found out from Hesperus about the First Machines. It didn't make sense to me why the Machine People would form such a strong association with this ancient robot civilization that they've never even come into contact with before, simply because they were robots? I just felt like if we ever found out there was some ancient human civilization that got wiped out, I don't know if humans would care that much, honestly. And the Machine People had never been under any direct threat from the organic civilizations thus far, so it felt like they were poking a hornet's nest without any impetus to do so.Also, I'm not sure if I missed it but I don't really know what was the role of Palatial in this whole story? I was expecting there to be some link between the simulation story and the one we saw played out. While we did see certain parallels between Purslane and Abigail as the princess, I was quite confused overall about why we had to go through all the Palatial sequences. I was convinced that the little boy was Valmik, and perhaps he is? But we never really got a confirmation of that. We also don't know which shatterling Abigail became, but I guess that was meant to be a deliberate non-answer. I would guess it's Purslane though.Why didn't we get more explanation about the House of Suns? Who started this House? Who recruits people into this House? What was the point of going through all this effort to make sure all the Lines didn't remember the genocide that they committed? I just struggled to see the point of this secret House and all the stuff they've been doing for 6 million years. I really expected a lot more about them considering this whole book was named after them.Lastly, that ending just felt way too abrupt. I can understand when an author wants to leave a bit of an open ending, but I felt like that was the wrong point to end a story. Hesperus sacrificed himself to save Purslane, we can be fairly sure that the person inside Hesperus is Purslane, and then... what? How are Campion and Purslane going to start a new civilization in Andromeda? It seems like they're essentially stranded there, right?

Nevertheless though, I overall really enjoyed this book and was super glad to have picked it up for my book club, I don't think I would have otherwise heard of it at all. Would definitely check out more from Reynolds.