Cover art for the Alastair Reynolds novel “House of Suns.”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

I just finished Alastair Reynolds’ 2008 science fiction novel House of Suns. The book’s scope in time and space is vast, so it’s difficult to summarize let alone absorb.

Warning: Spoiler Alert!

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, a few individuals including one Abigail, decide the only practical way to explore the galaxy is to replicate themselves (almost) into a vast number of copies or “shatterlings.” Eventually, these shatterlings organize into Houses (such as the House of Moths and the House of Flowers) and inside the Houses family lines, such as the Gentian Line. This Line has emanated from Abigail, a person who was kept in childhood medically for decades before being allowed to become an adult and lead her family.

We get glimpses into Abigail’s early life up to her decision to create the shatterlings and to become one herself. These events parallel what occurs much, much later involving the shatterlings Campion and Purslane.

These two travel with each other albeit in their own spacecraft. Shatterlings, through a combination of relativistic speeds and stasis chambers, travel throughout the Milky Way and only have reunions with the other members of their Line once every “circuit” of the galaxy.

The Lines have become so powerful that they are able to move stars and planets and to create “stardams” to shield (for example) local planetary systems from a supernova or other stellar threat. They are considered a great force for good and typically outlast the “turnover” of most human and post-human civilizations, recording everything they encounter in “troves.”

The problem starts when a troublesome “guest” of the pair dies under mysterious circumstances. If it’s not an accident then a member of the Machine People (sapient robots) named Hesperus, which the couple recently rescued and who is suffering from memory loss, may be the culprit.

Campion and Purslane are breaking tradition by traveling as a pair and worse, by being lovers. As they travel to the reunion, they receive a distress message saying that the planet hosting the meeting and the orbiting ships were attacked by an unknown enemy using forbidden weapons long thought destroyed. The planet was reduced to molten slag. They are warned not to approach and to proceed to a fallback location only Line members know about.

Fearing there may be survivors, they instead arrive at the scene of the massacre and are attacked. Barely evading the attackers, they rescue a number of survivors whose ships are hiding in the orbiting debris. Hesperus seemingly sacrifices himself in order to allow Campion, Purslane, and the survivors to escape. He later is retrieved but is in a state equivalent to a coma. The survivors had managed to capture four attackers, apparently members of other Lines, but their motive for such a heinous act is unclear.

On the sanctuary world, they discover that out of tens of thousands of shatterlings, only fifty survived. A number of critical events occur including disciplinary action against Purslane for her relationship with Campion, an attempt to revive Hesperian by “offering” him to a local phenomenon called “The Spirit of the Air,” and the murder of a shatterling who was attempting to retrieve Campion’s deleted data store. The latter might contain a vital clue as to why the Line had been all but wiped out.

Two other members of the Machine People, Cadence and Cascade were other guests of the Line who survived the attack and are very sympathetic to Campion’s and Purslane’s desire to repair Hesperus. When the “Spirit” returns the robot, physically repaired but still inert, they want to take him back to their space to see if he can be restored. Previously, the Line members, as punishment against Purslane, had given the robots her ship, the fastest one available, knowing it would hurt her.

The prisoners are being tortured in very unique ways by another shatterling assigned to the task and three out of four are killed. Before any useful information, besides the mention of the previously unknown “House of Suns,” is revealed, The two robots, with Purslane and Hesperian on board, seize her ship Silver Wings of Morning and leave the system at a high rate of speed.

Revelation follows revelation including the fact that Hesperus is alive but strangely altered. The traitor among the Line is revealed thanks in part to a clue left behind by the murdered shatterling.

A lost race of machines that had been “accidentally” wiped out by the Line, a hidden stardam, an uncommon use for wormhole technology, and the fate of the cloaked or possibly destroyed Andromeda galaxy all play into the climax.

Reynolds does a terrific job of taking all of these disparate threads and weaving them in a complex pattern that finally reveals a complete picture.

It’s not exactly pulse-pounding excitement and it does take some time (it did for me at any rate) to make it through the 576 pages of the novel. The payoff at the end is worth it and the ride along the way is pretty good. The only problem is trying to make sense of all the complex elements. Reynolds rightly doesn’t spoon-feed the reader as to who is who and how things work, at least not right away, but it does force the reader to slow down in order to take in all the details.

Although there is rich worldbuilding involved and a setup for a sequel (or series), this remains a standalone novel. This is an involved, intricate, and expansive space opera that recalls legendary science fiction tomes of the past. If all this sounds appealing, pick up a copy (admittedly, I got one from my local public library).