House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

If you are an Alastair Reynolds fan, as I am, you tend to really be an Alastair Reynolds fan. It’s hard science fiction, full of lofty physics and ideas that sometimes blow your mind. (Reynolds was a working astrophysicist before becoming an author.) House of Suns is one of those books; it reaches for the stars and the entire universe. The plot spans 10s of thousands of light years and, therefore, 10s of thousands of years of time. The scope of the story is just as ambitious. And assuming you love this side of Reynolds, House of Suns is his best book.

This is a standalone book. It is 512 pages in paperback form, so it isn’t very long. It feels much more substantial than the page count. The early chapters are dense with world-building and unique terminology. Some of that terminology is unique not just to the genre but to Alastair Reynolds. Shatterlings are unique “people”. Light years are called lights. Some of the technology that will be used millions of years in the future is so evolved that it is at the very edge of physics as we know it. Once the foundation is laid, though, the story amazes.

The plot is pretty straightforward. Campion and Purslane are on their way to meet up with their shatterling ‘siblings’ after roaming the galaxy for 200,000 years. They get delayed, and that ends up saving their lives. And they, in turn, work to save the galaxy, with plenty of mystery along the way. They are joined by iconic characters and situations in events so strange that your jaw may drop. A few are brand-new ideas and creations, at least in this reviewer’s vast reading of science fiction canon. The Vigilance with its mega-humans. The majesty and humanity of the machine people. The shatterling lines of immortals. There is a wide variety of spacecraft (are any two the same?). The different ways of “enduring” sub-light travel.

This is characterized by Amazon as a space opera, but that is that it is too easy. It is full of complex ideas that make you stop and think right up to the last page. I put the book down at certain points, so that I could absorb the ideas. This is a massive yet intricate universe, spanning the entire galaxy, perhaps one of Alastair Reynolds’s best. It is one that begs for more books and more characters, but as even as a standalone novel – maybe because of it, House of Suns is brilliant.