Teaser

Campion and Purslane are running late for a family reunion, but when they arrive home they find their family of clones decimated by an unknown assailant. With the future of the Gentian line at stake, the siblings are forced to reckon with the mysteries of an ancient and belligerent universe . . .

Review

Alastair Reynolds is one of the biggest names in British science fiction, but I’ve got a somewhat potted history with his work. His YA-adjacent Revenger trilogy is a good entry point to his work, and I really enjoyed it. His shorter fiction also strikes a chord with me. Yet whenever I’ve attempted his longer, adult novels, I’ve come away unimpressed. His most famous work, Revelation Space, left me cold, while Aurora Rising was a lacklustre affair. I had largely turned my back on him, writing him off as another Peter F. Hamilton situation in which I just wasn’t getting it, but it turns out much of his oeuvre is currently available through Audible Plus, so I thought I’d head back one last time.

I’ve actually read House of Suns before, but so long ago that I remember none of it. Perhaps not a good omen, but this made it a logical place to restart my Reynolds journey. House of Suns, perhaps by virtue of being a standalone, is often held up as the best of Reynolds’ work, or at least emblematic of what you can expect from the author. To the latter point, I think the masses are correct. This is a very Reynolds novel. But his best? Not by a comfortable margin. That title surely belongs to the novella Slow Bullets. House of Suns is, however, more than interesting enough to make me pick up another Reynolds sooner rather than later.

I’m going to start with the biggest flaw of the novel, which is a structural one. The story is told by a pair of clones (or shatterlings, to use the parlance of the narrative), Purslane and Campion. They roughly alternate chapters, but there is no indication of who is narrating at any given time, which led to some very confusing opening stages. Multiple first-person narrators can work, and are very common these days, but they require clear labelling in order to function properly. That is sorely lacking here, and while John Lee’s narration is as engaging as anything you could hope to ask for, but the two characters sound exactly alike. Which, given they are clones, is perhaps only natural.

As an additional quirk, between acts of the novel are flashbacks to the founding member of this clone dynasty. A large number of these are concerned with a virtual fantasy world. Normally, I’d be all in on a story within a story, but here it adds nothing to the overall narrative. If anything, it feels like filler in a book that is already verging on the bloated.

Moving onto what’s goo about the novel, that bloat plays to Reynolds’ strengths. He is an author firmly aware of how vast and ancient the universe is. This universe is full of strange wonders, from clone dynasties to disembodied AI, to empires of robots, to closed-off galaxies. It’s all wonderfully realised, and rooted in hard science, so obviously I love it. This is one of those books that is so stuffed with ideas that it can be hard to take everything in. Even if some of those ideas don’t pay off as well as others, they’re almost all worth paying attention to.

As to the central mystery, that’s a real thriller. While it can be hard to keep track of all the different players, it’s a delight to see a murder mystery in which the culprit remains unknown until almost the very end, but whose reveal feels entirely natural, and not just a forced twist of the narrative. Purslane’s and Campion’s investigations drive much of the novel, and each turn and reveal lands comfortably. A crime novel, this is not, but the tension builds nicely throughout, and the answers are more than satisfactory.

House of Suns is, in this readers humble opinion, unworthy of the praise lavished upon it, but it’s still a strong book, and worthy of your time.

Audio Stats

• Narrated by John Lee
• A Standalone Novel
• First Published in 2009
• Runtime 18hrs 17hrs