House of Suns By Alastair Reynolds By Robert Walter House of Suns is the 10th novel by the well known Science Fiction author Alastair Reynolds. The book is published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of The Penguin Group and was first released in the United States in June 2009. The book was on the short list of nominees for the 2009 Arthur C Clarke award. House of Suns started very slowly for me. It was not grabbing my attention as I was reading which caused many a break from reading it. I eventually soldiered on and got through the first few chapters where the story started to pick up. The story primarily deals with two “shatterlings”, Campion and Purslane, male and female clones of Abigail Gentian. Abigail is the start of the Gentian Line of which there were 1000 clones. These clones travel the Milky Way Galaxy collecting knowledge of the various human and post-human civilizations spread throughout the galaxy. Every 200,000 years all of the shatterlings come together for a 1000 day reunion ceremony to exchange information. Campion and Purslane are, of course, in a forbidden relationship which if discovered would lead to severe punishment. They are retuning for the most recent reunion ceremony when they discover there has been an ambush wiping out most of the Gentian Line. The story deals with how they come to grips with the ambush, the causes and effects of this act and their choice to continue to be together. I won’t reveal anymore details, but to say the ending is a very unique surprise. This story is huge in its reach across the universe in both distances and time involved and brings together many far reaching ideas that really make you think and spurs the imagination. In some parts, it borders on fantasy, but not enough to be a problem during the read. The technologies described and used sound plausible, similar to reading some other visionary Science Fiction writers whose predictions of technology to come were remarkably accurate to current times. Mr. Reynolds vision and skill with the storylines within come through loud and clear and the human message within the story is applicable in any time. Overall House of Suns is 470 pages with a great story and was a good read. I recommend it to any fans of Science Fiction. Just understand that you will have to work through the slow start to get to the good stuff inside.

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