House of Suns: A Sci-Fi Lover's Heaven

Spaceships, spaceships engaging in space battles, spaceships chasing other spaceships, machine intelligence, friendly AIs, un-friendly AIs, machine intelligence fighting other machine intelligence, friendly machines defending human friends, cloning, romance between clones, cryosleep during space travel, mysterious ancient war between machines and humans... Every single concept introduced engaged my sci-fi-loving neurons, at some point I put the book down and started crying. After I was done crying, I ripped off my shirt, took to the streets, and howled at the moon. Machine Intelligence A central theme of this book is the relationship between machine intelligence and organic human beings. This book has one of the most interesting portrayals of machine intelligence - many of the machine characters are depicted as being competent entities that can handle countless of computations per second whilst juggling numerous sensory input, yet they come off as more human than humans. The tension, mistrust, and complicated interplay between the organic and non-organic life-forms play a central role in the story. So many of the machine characters show multiple dimensions and made me feel drawn to them. Divisive Some things I could see being divisive for other readers. Flashbacks The author heavy use of flashbacks to a clearly distant time period before the main ongoing story made me wonder whose memory it was, and how it relates to the main plot at all. What it ended up being can be slightly disappointing after finishing the read, as there were so many ways the flashbacks could have been something much cooler. Still, I respect the author's intentions. Ending The ending is also something that I knew other readers would have polarizing opinions of. After finishing the book, I went on Reddit and Goodreads to see what other people thought of the book, and the ending was something that many people agreed could have been handled better. I agree in many ways, but the read preceding the ending was satisfying for me that I think I was just happy that the book wraps up somehow. I'm someone that tends to accept a piece of art for what it is rather than find flaws or things that I don't like. Personal Verdict One of the best sci-fi books I've read (but that may be only me). This was the first book that set off my Alastair Reynolds phase, which has lasted around 3 years by now and is still ongoing