The Wellstone

One of the problems with royalty is that it's heriditary. Which means that, even if you end up with a really good king, like say as good as King Bruno de Towaji of Sol, you still have to end up dealing with his kids eventually. And the children of royalty, more often than not, end up being spoiled little shits.

Of course, while this is very much the story of Prince Bascal, son of royalty and scientific genius, it also deals on a larger scale by looking at the sociological implications of the technology that McCarthy introduced in the first book in the series: when you've eliminated death and aging from society, what happens to the next generation? Those kids who will never get to come into their own, and will never get to replace those who came before.

There's a lot of interesting stuff brought up by McCarthy here; the only problem is he doesn't quite deal with it all, and as a result this feels like only half of a story.