House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds

Wonderful though Reynolds' Revelation Space novels are, you could argue that particularly in regards to his more recent work, he seems to operate or a freer, more imaginative and simply more expansive manner in the galaxy spanning books outside his more famous universe. That was certainly the case with Pushing Ice and now with House of Suns, he finds another way of compressing time and space on an unimaginable level across millions of years (and light years) through the agency of a race of cloned humans of the Gentian Line.

The Gentian line have been around long enough to observe and record the vast changes that take place in the galaxy, watching cultures come and go, intervening when asked to create Star Dams using the ancient technology of the advanced Priors, but primarily seeking information about the mysteries of the universe. Campion and his consort Purslane have however inadvertently stumbled upon a piece of information that someone doesn't want revealed, a secret that could threaten the stability of the whole galaxy - and this unknown entity, who it is suspected is related to a mysterious organisation called the House of Suns, is prepared to wipe out the entire Gentian Line to make sure that it remains a secret. 

House of Suns is a strong Alastair Reynolds novel - not as pulpy sci-fi as his previous novel The Prefect, it's harder on the technical and scientific side of things, but just as strong in characterisation and plotting, taking into consideration vast concepts of the nature of space, longevity and artificial intelligence. The underlying conflict at the heart of House of Suns though, however well dressed up it may be, is nonetheless ultimately an age-old one in science-fiction and it is brought to a rather abrupt and open-ended conclusion by Reynolds, but this is nonetheless fine work of an extremely high standard by simply the best writer of grand space operatic science-fiction around.

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