I like Alastair's work anyway, and of the half-dozen or so of is that I've read, this is easily my favourite.

Die Welt ist typisch Reynolds: epische Science Fiction, in Zeit und Raum gigantisch, aber trotzdem stimmig. Un)profound thoughts on genre: every genre has its icons, and Reynolds seems to be one of science fiction's favorites, with at least sixteen books and many, many, more shorts and novellas. Ungovernable Galaxy: No interstellar society has persisted for more than a few hundred thousand years courtesy of there being no Faster-Than-Light Travel or Subspace Ansible technology; empires have formed then slowly started to unravel and break apart from internal or external pressures and have done so for the past six million years. Set Six million years in the future, this story is set in a universe vastly different than anything you have ever read before. I’ve read and enjoyed quite a few of their Alastair Reynolds, but not this one, which they took to university, and which I’ve just borrowed.However, without female pronouns, I doubt I’d guess Purslane was a woman, and the loving relationship and smattering of sex between her and Campion feels bolted on. Despite having been around for millions of years, undergoing their own Mechanical Evolution, there's still people who think of them as nothing more than mindless automatons who just ''imitate'' sentience. So, when I realized that most of the characters in House of Suns were literal clones of the same character, I rolled my eyes a little and thought “Well, I guess that’s one way to get around the criticism. The flip-side of his tendency to over-describe is that all the surreal and haunting scenes were conjured effortlessly in my mind.

I suppose adding unnecessary linear complexity to a story that already has so many strange new concepts in it, might’ve been overkill on the reader. This is a minor (story-wise) mystery mentioned early on; naturally, it proves to be significant later. Discrimination is indeed allowed, and these authors would probably benefit--indeed, we might all benefit--if someone should feel confident about saying, "no, this isn't very good at all" without worrying about feelings. There's a culture that is millennia old, that behaves with the self-indulgence and impetuousness of youth, and that has remained impossibly naive.

Mechanical Lifeforms: The Machine People, a race of human-looking androids with a little bit of clockwork features thrown in for flair.

Many of those empires were benevolent and welcoming, but others were inimical to all outside influences. House of Suns is a novel by Welsh sci-fi author Alastair Reynolds, set in more or less the same universe as the novella Thousandth Night .These aren´t rare too and Reynolds plays his astrophysics profession card more wisely and less hardcore than in the Revelation Space series, making it easier to follow, more focused on the great and heavily interwoven plot, so be focused while reading not to oversee the premises because Reynolds likes to puzzle with tiny pieces and each knows it´s place. Personally, the character work in Reynolds’ books has never bothered me, but if it bothered you, I think you’ll find this one has a refreshingly different take. I’d say this would be a terrific jumping in point if you were interested in checking out Reynolds’ work.

In this respect Reynolds somewhat succeeds, though these passages of time eventually lose their impact and become mere statements of fact. It was indeed – it uses the setting and some characters from the novella Thousandth Night (which I haven’t read). At the same time, there's a parallel story that takes place millennia in the past involving a young girl, Abigail, her playmate and a immersion cube, and the medieval castle setting where the two play. There are mercifully brief fantasy interludes (inside a virtual reality) which I don't really care for, it reminds of scenes from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer which did not appeal to me (the scenes, not the bWe don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Hesperus is a member of the "Machine People", an advanced civilization of robots, and supposedly the only non-human sentient society in existence. The primary storyline begins as Campion and Purslane are roughly fifty years late to the 32nd Gentian reunion.