House of Suns

Of course, like many people, I do the bulk of my reading in the hours before I go to bed. Sometimes, it's just a few minutes. But more often it's about an hour.

When I finish a book during these times, and I go to bed glad to have finished and wondering what I'll read tomorrow. Usually I feel satisfied by my read. Sometimes, rarely, I feel a little miffed or disappointed. But ultimately I'm not too picky a reader, and even if I didn't quite enjoy the journey, I always appreciate the fact that I took that journey.

But sometimes, in a great while, I finish a book that so shakes my reader's paradigm that cannot go to sleep. My mind is so stimulated by what I have read that it continues to dwell on the story well into the wee hours of the morning. Often times I will wake up, having gotten a scant few hours of rest, still thinking about said book.

House of Suns, the latest offering from Alastair Reynolds, is such a book. Other authors who have done this include the likes of Dan Simmons, George R. R. Martin, and Iain Banks. These are authors whose works are often genre-defining, or genre-busting that they for ever ruin, or at least raise the bar, of the genres they represent.

Martin did that for me for fantasy. Simmons, Reynolds and Banks do that for me for science fiction.

Let's talk about Alastair Reynolds. I remember the very first time I picked up one of his books. This was during the heyday of my employment at World's Biggest Bookstore, when the employee's discount forever implanted in me the realization that reading wasn't just a hobby, but a lifestyle choice for me. During this time, I was a science fiction and fantasy whore, picking up just about anything, mostly based on the cover art. I've read gold, and I've read dross.

Revelation Space was a big, black, shiny trade-paper back, an imposing, 500+ page tome. I started it, but within a few chapters, I realized this was not for me. I was new to the science fiction field, and not ready for idea-driven science fiction. I needed the requisite hard sci-fi as a warm up. Space-ships that morph shape? Future worlds where spider-like carriages traverse spire-ridden chasm cities? No thanks. Give me plasma-drives and kinetic-kill cannon, and worlds where I could logically (if not always intrinsically) see where we and science were headed. Revelation Space was too grand for me. I put it down for more near-sighted fare.

It wasn't for many more years that I finally pulled it from the shelf. By then, I was a little more seasoned. Dan Simmons had opened my eyes to space opera and idea-driven fiction, and I had even finished my first Iain Banks novel. This time, Reynolds had me hooked, and I soon devoured what other books he had.

House of Suns isn't set in his standard universe of Chasm City. Or, perhaps it is, but it's at such a remove as to make it seem a separate universe. The story centers around two shatterlings, two of a thousand clones of a single person who travel to the galaxy and occasionally return to exchange their memories. The story happens over time scales that are impossible for we humans to understand, and so Reynolds treats it as the characters in the story treat it--of only passing significance.

The story is also told through three points of view, made all the more interesting in that it is all in first person. I recently also finished Charles Stross' Halting State, which also did interesting things with the narrative, so Reynolds' mode was an easy swallow.

At it's core, the story is a mystery novel. A event happens, which the characters must find answers to. Crisis and conflict ensue. Meanwhile, the story is threaded with a sort of parallel tale, that recounts how the clones came to be some 6 million years ago (which is incidentally about 1000 years in the future for us). The end of the book happens at so far a remove from us and our time that it is of no bearing to us. Yet the ending is also immensely satisfying, because of it's humanism.

If I'm being vague, it's intentional. I have no desire to ruin the book, but to merely persuade others to read it. I often find that endings in books can be problematic. Though they represent two of my favourite authors, I usually have problems with the ends of their books. Stross simply wraps up his books too quickly. Banks does the same but is almost cliched in his bitter-sweetness. Reynolds isn't really an exception here, but there's something that seems more fulfilling.

Again, vague, and I apologize for it. Normally, once I've finished a book, I consider what to read next. I think I may have to wait a while before I crack open another book.