House of Suns [B1901]

2009 HCDJ 1st edition in nice clean condition (sells for $20+ on eBay). An "engaging and awe-inspiring"(SF Signal) stand-alone space opera from the critically-acclaimed author of the Revelation Space series. Six million years ago, at the dawn of the star-faring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones, which she called shatterlings. She sent them out into the galaxy to observe and document the rise and fall of countless human empires. Since then, every two hundred thousand years, they gather to exchange news and memories of their travels. Only there is no Gathering. Someone is eliminating the Gentian line. And now Campion and Purslane -- two shatterlings who have fallen in love and shared forbidden experiences -- must determine exactly who, or what, their enemy is, before they are wiped out of existence . . .

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "A stellar tale of clones, machines, and living with guilt."; ; "Fantastic story from an exceptional imagination. I've never read anything remotely like this. Alastair Reynolds let his brain loose, and off you go."; "I've heard pretty good things about Alastair Reynolds' writing, and was excited to jump into it, House of Suns being one of the most recommended standalone books of his, and boy, am I glad I did. The world (galaxy? universe?) building was so rich, and the concepts so imaginative. It took a bit to get used to it, because the book REALLY info dumps a lot at the beginning, but oddly enough, it felt so easy to read, despite being so esoteric and bizarre and strange. The dialogue in particular was easy to follow and to get invested in, even when there were some very heavy scientific concepts being explained. The scale of the book is pretty insane, with events taking place in hundreds, thousands or even millions of years, yet it all works really well in the end, and makes you wonder a lot about the passage of time. The sci-fi concepts were fascinating and very thought provoking, and the flashbacks to how everything began in the universe of this book were really interesting. This was a great scif-fi book, and I'm definitely intrigued to read more of Alastair's writing now."; "This book was like a fever dream I didn't want to end. Like all of Reynold's books, it twists and flows and races through layers of spacetime and lofty imaginings of what humans could do given enough time, cooperation, and resources. The ultimate goal of Abigail and her shatterlings resonates with what I would do with near-immortality. Travel the cosmos for the sake of gathering as much information as possible? having billions of years in which to do it? The galaxy is just so huge, and time so expansive, that you'd never run out of things to observe and document. That sounds like a dream to me."