11/09 Alastair Reynolds - House of Suns
I'm beginning to see what despotliz means about Al Reynolds by numbers. However, I can't understand how that can possibly be a bad thing. The ideas are so huge, I wonder how he can keep hold of them. There's some beautiful writing too. The story is a bit slow to get going, but when it does, the pace is relentless, and the end is... surprising. The focus is a bit wider than that of The Prefect (previously my favourite Reynolds), and I think it works better. There's a lot of interesting stuff about human clones and the effect of environment on development - something I'm studying right now and I'm very interested in. tamaranth and I are not quite sure whether Abigail is meant to have deliberately manipulated her clones to be different from one another, or not. I want to hope not, because I like speculating about what has happened to make Campion a bit of a shit, when Purslane isn't. There had better be a sequel!