Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention blue remembered remembered earth steel breeze alastair reynolds revelation space space opera science fiction solar system poseidon children main character chiku green chiku yellow chiku akinya worth reading house of suns artificial intelligence children series well written chiku red millions of people. Showing of reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now.
Please try again later. Mass Market Paperback Verified Purchase. I've read every novel and many short stories written by Alastair Reynolds, and he's one of my favorite Sci-Fi authors. I realized while reading this one what it is that appeals to me. I like how he finds ways to deal with the incredible distances between stars, and how to could make it work with slower-than-light travel.
I think we've lost the appreciation of just how far apart stars are, when most Sci-Fi makes it almost trivial. Reynolds actually makes it seem feasible to build star-faring civilizations without the quick trips in most TV shows and movies. So in this novel, mankind is traveling to a distant star after observing evidence of an alien civilization. Millions of people in hollowed out asteroids, living in micro-societies, extending their lifetimes with age-defying medical tech, and occasional "skipovers" long sleep. One of them is traveling to the star, while one stays behind on Earth. By synching up their memories at a few points in time, they're able to share information about a conspiracy touching both areas.
In effect, the novel's hero is able to jump back and forth at light speed to investigate and fight the conspiracy, without violating limits on travel speed. Nice concept, and he pulls it off well. This book didn't make it easy to remember the previous book, and there were some places and people that confused me for a while, and had I remembered the first book better, I would have understood this one quicker.
So I would definitely recommend reading that one first, and don't wait too long before you read this one. As for myself, I'm going to read "Poseidon's Wake" next, while I still remember this one. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. This is the second book in a trilogy, and while I think you can enjoy it on its own, for optimal enjoyment you really should start with the first novel Blue Remembered Earth.
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While I love most Reynolds' work, i was not completely convinced by book 1. A story set in a colonised solar system, it felt more like a treasure hunt across the planets, lacking that cosmic awe that worked so well in his Revelation Space series. Still, it was interesting enough with a generally convincing depiction of the future - something Reynolds does so very well, much better than most writers in the genre.
In this book humanity starts with interstellar colonisation. How we tackle the transport for millions of colonists is something I leave for you to discover, it is a neat idea. Exactly like in his Revelation Space universe, there is no faster than light travel. This in contrast to most other SF books where hyperspace jumps are dead easy.
This realistic at least with current understanding of physics approach makes these books extra interesting. Just as with Peter Baxter's Proxima there is a logical issue with the colonisation travel: Ok, but then you'd expect nearly all colonists to be asleep aside from as skeleton crew.
Of course then we would not have "parallel" story lines in the solar system and amongst the traveling colonists. I put the quotes there because the information between the two areas takes decades to transfer, something that Reynolds handles well in the story. Several subtopics abound in the book, making it rich and interesting. There is the concept of altered post-humans.
One of the character is a 3rd gender - something that is otherwise not further explained. There are interesting concepts about cloning, consciousness, big brother-like supervision, intellectually elevated elephants, and especially the problem of truly independent AI. This rich tapestry, and the alien situation on the colonisation target, gives the book the book that sense of remarkably believable cosmic awe, and in fact makes this novel a better, more satisfying read than the first volume. It is really a work of a contemporary master of the genre, so much deeper and more satisfying than popular B movie-like SF books like the Dire Earth Cycle.
Of note is also that Reynolds' writing style has improved over time. The big ideas were there in his early books, but these sometimes had technical info dumps interrupting the story. This new trilogy is much more character driven without sacrificing on believable world building. So, a very good, well crafted modern SF novel. I already look forward to the concluding volume. My only wish for that book would be to have little focus on augmented elephants, it is a subplot that didn't really captivate me. One person found this helpful.
Maybe this triology was one of his early I read a lot from A. The Revelation Space triology was excellent. Maybe this triology was one of his early books. While it's true that people in A. Reynolds books only serve as a background for the magnificent description of future technik, the characters in Revelation Space were interesting and their actions understandable.
In this triology we accompany several generations of the same family.
In the first two books the characters - while not very complicated - still could be real people. In the third book "Poseidons Wake" the characters are childishly opinionated and very flat. The elephants were the most mature. Still - very interesting glimpse in a possible future. I am fan of AR. Feb 25, Outis rated it liked it Shelves: This is a Reynolds so the light lag complicates matters. In spite of serious plot issues, the middle of the book especially is a more engaging read than the prequel on a superficial level. If you're looking for space adventures with less violence, less impossible physics and less Anglo supremacism than is typical in the genre, this could be a great book for you.
That is, if you're not too picky about stuff that doesn't make much sense and that's been blatantly put there to serve the plot or to make grand events hinge on a handful of characters but they why would you be looking at the sequel of BRE? Reynolds often writes stuff that would pass in a fast movie but not in such long books. A novelty however is that the narrative structure is aligned with a cool plot device. It made the beginning of the book drag a bit but when I understood what Reynolds was doing I thought it was brilliant. Unfortunately, the end of the book abandons this approach and devolves into the usual structure fast and nonsensical POV cuts.
Now I'll delve into a few important themes without belaboring the material which was already in the prequel First, the AI stuff which rubbed me the wrong way. BRE already had some bizarre essentialist bigotry but that stuff plays a much more important part in this book. Reynolds even used the word "essence". It's not merely the characters which occasionally blurt out ill-considered opinions: So the author must actually take this stuff seriously.
Much of the plot and especially the ending was predicated on that stuff. The gen ship stuff I was looking forward to was eclipsed by the "new" read impossible and overly convenient physics which afflicted the setting with Revelation Space-type gigantism, as I feared. But there's still some cool stuff, including a Paradises Lost vibe.
One thing which stands out is the so-called slowdown problem which I could not resist reading as an allusion to contemporary issues such as climate change. On the one hand, the relevant global or rather galactic? But on the other hand, what's going on in our world is no less insane. So on some level I thought it was plausible. The cognitive dissonance type of effect would be brilliant if it was indeed what the author intended.
But then why ruin it with such a convenient techo-fix? Another interesting feature of this part of the story one may read as a paralleling current events is the denialists, their politics and their motivations. I'll not say more because I don't want to spoil this part. I thought the relationships of the narrators with their partners wasn't convincing, and they're not always merely background. The partners were unconvincing as characters actually. Maybe they were intended as male versions of female stereotypes.
The economics of the book is bad and more importantly unimaginative. That's become too common in the genre. The information security stuff was as nonsensical as I've come to expect. There are some howlers. It would be a bigger issue if that was the only problem with the plot. We already knew Reynolds takes into account the weaponization potential of the energies involved in interstellar travel. So there's a smattering of Atomic Rockets-type material in this book. In sum, a mild disappointment for me but still a good read. Others might enjoy it more. There's plenty to like.
A surprisingly disappointing sequel. The first book was hit and miss, but was interesting enough to keep me going.
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Reynolds has a knack for finding the least interesting plot development, making that the center of the narrative for an interminably long stretch, and then following that by having a character show up to give the protagonist a detailed, after-the-fact account of events happening elsewhere that would have made a much more engaging focus for the story. This happe A surprisingly disappointing sequel.
This happens more than once in On the Steel Breeze, and it left me wondering if this book might have been the author's first, rather than his tenth or eleventh. This is a real shame, because the Akinya family still has a lot of potential. But the series is consistently undermined not only by the problem mentioned above, but also by an excess of supporting characters having little purpose, constant repetition of the same limited information, and by the end of the book a moral incoherence that makes characters' reactions to plot developments seem completely bizarre and implausible.
Yet as harsh as I might sound, I feel more disappointed than dismissive, because Reynolds does seem to be a talented writer in many respects. Enough so to make me think the flaws of this book should have been entirely avoidable. And for this very reason, neither death really has the impact I suspect it was intended to have.
We meet a few members of one generation almost in passing, and then later their descendant, Dakota, who we are told is tremendously significant without being given actual evidence to justify the claim. Much more could have been done with them here, especially given the bloat elsewhere in this overlong novel. What vital part did she play that couldn't have been handled by someone else or simply left out entirely?
Neither was much more than an excuse for a very contrived action sequence that added little to the story including Pedro's death for the reason given above. I got it the first time. Was it necessary to kill so many trees in making this point again and again? And in the discussion that follows, the death of so many people is dealt with by the characters in a manner that is, at best, perfunctory, while they explain away Chiku's complicity in a staggering crime as a simple matter of being a little too rushed to think things through.
I think even Peter Singer would find this moral framing perverse, if not outright monstrous. When she with the Tantors! Instead the narrative devotes page after page to Chiku doing effectively nothing--and then gives us a dull account after the fact of what could have been an exciting political confrontation played out across a massive holoship. There are things here to like, and evidence of real talent, but all the potential promised by On the Steel Breeze is undermined by inexplicable authorial choices.
I wish I had some reason to try book three, but there's just not enough here to justify it. Oct 09, Robert rated it it was amazing. Alastair knows how to end his stories and have me craving his next work. A very enjoyable read! I've dithered about giving this 3 or 4 stars, and realized the difference between the 2 is a 4 makes me ponder "deep" stuff, while a 3 very much engrosses me but when I'm done reading, it's out of mind.
Oct 11, Cara rated it it was amazing Shelves: I have not enjoyed a n Alastair Reynolds book this much since Pushing Ice. The thrill of each page turn took me back to Reynolds' Revelation Space days. Just when I thought I might end a chapter and give it a rest for the night, the last couple of paragraphs compelled me to continue. Couldn't put the book down, so much so, that on the last day I ploughed through it during my classes lecture notes be damned!
I loved the introduction to the new generation of characters and references to the old I was quite upset to read of Geoffrey's passing, but thrilled to be introduced to the artilect "Eunice". I have grown very fond of Chiku Green and can hardly contain my anticipation of the conclusion to Poseidon's Children.
I felt that there was less intrigue in Book 2 and it was much more predictable than many of Reynolds' other novels, but I enjoyed a return to the exploration of the organic vs machine intelligence. I especially liked the idea of a 'lesser', infant machine-substrate consciousness Arachne having to deal with a much more ancient and powerful machine-substrate consciousness the Watchkeepers.
The only criticism I have of the book is that there seemed to be too many fortuitous events that transpired to help the main characters, more so than in Blue Remembered Earth or any Reynolds' novel for that matter. There was very little character development but that was at the expense of the story so it isn't really a criticism there is always a mysteriousness about Reynolds' characters that I enjoy. I also didn't care for the quasi-cliffhanger ending but only because I'm impatient for the conclusion. Jan 04, Tommy Carlson rated it liked it.
This is the sequel to Blue Remembered Earth. I didn't like that one much. I don't like this one much either. I mean, I didn't hate either one; I just wasn't thrilled. Most of the characters lack any sort of agency. Things happen to them or push them into certain actions. It doesn't help that much of the story is told in flashbacks. It's an odd choice in dealing with time dilation. I don't think it was a good one. All that said, it's well written and contains more in the way of big ideas than the f This is the sequel to Blue Remembered Earth.
All that said, it's well written and contains more in the way of big ideas than the first book. It feels more Reynoldsesque. It's really a 3. Dec 06, Luke Burrage rated it liked it Shelves: I finished this last week, but didn't have internet access to tell anyone.
It's a very interesting storytelling experiment, but the ideas and concepts get in the way of pacing. Which is intentional, but don't make it any less weird to read. Oct 06, Kate rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is no mean achievement. Und das ist schwierig. Chicu Rot hat sogar eine noch schwierigere Aufgabe. Sie soll Eunice in ihrem Schiff folgen und sie bergen.
Ich habe diesen Roman genossen und bin gespannt, wie es endet; immerhin finden sie am Zielort eine Alien-KI die m. Set a significant period of time after Blue Remembered Earth , it follows the story of Chiku Akinya, the great granddaughter of Eunice Akinya - the space-travel pioneering matriarch whose absence dominated the previous story. Each Chiku has followed a different journey - Chiku Red has pursued the ship that Eunice Akinya was aboard when she left the solar system; Chiku Green is on a colony ship - part of a convoy on its way to a nearby habitable world that contains a vast alien structure; and Chiku Yellow has remained on Earth.
One of the clever conceits of the novel is the face that each Chiku can send packets of memories that can be incorporated into the memories of the others, and this is how they can remain in touch - almost as if they are the same person. It took me a while to get into this story, as the protagonist s is a new character, albeit a descendent of the characters from the first book, and so there was a sense of dislocation at the start. Soon enough, though, it finds its feet and starts progressing at pace - threats are uncovered, human, artificial and alien - and the story becomes more enthralling.
Additionally, when compared to he Revelation Space novels, the world and characters seem much more warm and full of positive life. Oct 01, Nathaniel rated it really liked it Shelves: This book addressed what I find to be the biggest problem with Alastair Reynolds' writing in specific and with hard space opera in general: I want my characters--at least some of them--to be idealistic. I want them to inhabit a rich moral universe where conceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, sacred and profane, and innumerable other judgments pervade their universe and influence their actions.
Where people try to do the right thing--even if they have totally diff This book addressed what I find to be the biggest problem with Alastair Reynolds' writing in specific and with hard space opera in general: Where people try to do the right thing--even if they have totally different ideas of what that entails--because I find that to be an interesting universe to inhabit and because it's how I see the world. Instead, most of the time, the characters of hard sf are all selfish, egotistical bastards who only reluctantly ever consider to do the right thing or sacrifice their own interests, like Han Solo without the charm or the soft, romantic core.
And that's the good guys! Sometimes we depart from that. The Prefect had an endearing friendship at the core of its story, and that's why it was my favorite book in the Revelation Space series, but it's still the rule. Finally, towards the very end of On the Steel Breeze, we got some of that kind of storytelling. For example, here's a speech from one of the main characters near the end: I am Chiku Akinya. I am the daughter of Sunday Akinya; I am the great-granddaughter of Eunice Akinya--Senge Dongma, the lion-faced one, mother of us all, the very reason why we're here in the first place.
She asked us to be wiser than human natures. Well, this is our great chance to be wise. I've made mistakes, I know--and I'm prepared to answer for them, too, when the time comes. But here and now, only one thing matters. All of us--human and machine alike--must choose the wise path. We both have the means to do harm to each other--the strength to destroy. But there is also a strength in not being strong. I beg of you to find that quality, and use it well. Now you're talking my language. I just may read the third book in this series after all. I do wish, however, that the mora aspects and the plot aspects were a little more closely related, and that we'd gotten them a lot sooner.
I also wished all the Afro-centrism was a little deeper, too. It's a nice change of pace to have Africans at the center of the story, but they don't actually seem in any way distinguishable from the ordinary characters Reynolds writes about. Other than occasionally mentioning their skin color, you would never know they are from Africa. The only remotely African aspects of the book are the presence of elephants and every now and then someone brings up the fact that the Maasai exist, without ever meeting a single one of them.
My mother was born in Nairobi Kenya. She taught me a little Swahili and told me about life there when I was a little. I know there's more to that part of the world the main characters are actually from Tanzania, which is just to the south of Kenya than the presence of elephants.
It'd be nice if some of it made it into the stories. Sep 03, Thomas Haverkamp rated it it was amazing Shelves: An excellently sf story, that is very intriguing. Nov 22, Adam McPhee rated it really liked it Shelves: Empathy was not built to operate across interstellar space. Kept thinking of it as Zola in space.
You know, track a family across generations and see how their environments effect them or whatever. And I guess because the family went from being an oligarchy in the first book to genteel poverty here, which is something you don't see often in Science Fiction. Better control group here, though: Plus they all occasionally synchronize their memories. My problem with the book was that the only cool sci-fi ideas were ones brought over from the last book, and there wasn't much time devoted to them, especially the Evolvarium a Mad Max machine intelligence running Mars.
Even the trip to Venus is kind of rote. The elephants, sorry, Tantors, are the coolest, but we barely send any time with them and their Aristeia is glanced over at the end of the book. Also, I wasn't clear on the motivations of the holoships.
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They wanted to stop research because although it would save their lives it could lead to another disaster. But why didn't they employ it once they had it and needed it? And why did they bombard Crucible? I'm pretty sure they didn't even know about Arachne yet, because that information didn't go public until the Eunice Akinya artilect revelas it, and even then that's on Zanzibar after they've cut off contact with the rest of the fleet?
Or I guess if it was during the conflict the other side would know, but I think it was after the conflict, when their ship was playing dead. Still, I loved the attempt to envision an optimistic future that doesn't shy away from certain questions involving the problems of longer lifespans, decades long hibernation, generations-long voyages, surveillance tech, being surpassed by technology or even other species, etc we'll have to face if we ever want to become a spacefaring race.
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Very much looking forward to reading the sequel and end of the Poseidon's Children trilogy, Poseidon's Wake. The result of illegal genetic experimentation conducted before Zanzibar ever left the solar system. Their minds are larger than those of baseline elephants, and they have a level of modular organisation approaching that of the human brain.
Some of these traits were already present in elephants, of course. But whatever they are, these creatures are no longer simply animals. Dreadnought extended his trunk. Chiku stopped and stood her ground. She let the trunk examine her suit, probing its way up her body, lingering over the joints and the batteries of controls. Warm, humid air blasted her and she resisted the urge to flinch with difficulty.
Dreadnought moved on to her face, mapping it with surprising gentleness. The trunk traced the contours of her scalp, then retreated. Her gaze switched between them. I mean you no harm. What have you been telling them? Word of you will spread. The Tantors know that any friend of mine is a friend of theirs. It swallows the soul. Once you drop below that radius, no force in the universe can stop you falling all the way in. It must be terribly hard on your father. Am I lying now? I do also still need your opinion on a certain matter. Would you indulge me, Chiku?
By the time of the breakout, about half of their number were fully grown adults. It turns out that elephants are more than happy to follow Tantors. Herd dynamics still count for something, and a talking matriarch trumps a mute one. With Tantors and baseline elephants acting in coordinated herds, our effective force was hundreds strong — easily sufficient to evict the constables from the thirty-six public cores.
Mposi and Ndege led the party to the level ground where the Tantors were parading back and forth, and Chiku circled the huge, slow-stomping creatures with something close to awe. Like the Tantors she had met in Chamber Thirty-Seven, their bodies were augmented with tools and communication attachments affixed to an arrangement of girdles and straps. Much of it looked improvised or second-hand. It was optimal to fit the Tantors with the machines when they were young, so some of these adults might never have the easy linguistic faculty Dakota had demonstrated.
But they were still more intelligent than the baseline elephants, demonstrably superior at abstract reasoning and able to follow complex spoken instructions. These Tantors, in common with the others elsewhere in Zanzibar, worked in close harmony with constables and peacekeepers. It was, Ndege stressed, as close to a partnership as circumstances allowed.
On the Steel Breeze - Wikipedia
Eunice had stipulated that the Tantors were to be treated as equals, and her assistance in ridding Zanzibar of its enemies had been scrupulously contingent on that understanding. Too much time had passed, and the distances between them were too great. Jul 04, Matthew Dowd rated it really liked it. Reynolds is always a joy to read, and he manages to make old territory feel new. Dec 11, Duncan rated it really liked it Shelves: Come on you raver, you seer of visions?
Firstly let me say that, as I hoped, I did enjoy this much more than the first book of the trilogy. Blue Remembered Earth set out an interesting world, but the treasure hunt story didn't take full advantage of it. This book takes a broader scale though with fewer characters, principally one character in two places at once - or two characters with shared memories.
Taking place simultaneously on Earth and on board a colonisation ship en route to a distant sta Come on you raver, you seer of visions? Taking place simultaneously on Earth and on board a colonisation ship en route to a distant star this story is like a cross between Blue Remembered Earth, and AR's previous work Chasm City. As previous readers will know well, Alasdair Reynolds takes a different and refreshingly 'real' approach to Space Opera from most others. No Wormholes, no FTL, no hyperspace.
So when your top speed is a small fraction of the speed of light, if you want to go somewhere light years distant, you'll have to wait it out.