Sister Alice

Robert Reed is one of the few authors that seems to be getting better over time - most just kind of relax and put out boring blase stuff (check out Orsen Scott Card's early stuff, for example... amazing). Reed seems to be able to make technology sound... 'why didn't I think of that' natural. In this book - well, the technology isn't quite that natural, but then again it is beyond any technological scope that any other author has approached in my experience - and I own and have read 5 - 10 thousand scifi novels. This is not a Dune - nothing approaches the multiple layers and sophistication of that ... still under-rated in my opinion .. novel. But for pure speculative hard sci-fi that stretches the reader in permanent and previously unimaginable ways, this book is in the top 10. Easily.

I bought this book on a whim at the local grocery of all places, and Man, I didn't realize what I was in for. I've read a lot of space opera, and this little mindbending epic is easily in my top five. Be warned, the technology is mostly behind the scenes, and Reed doesn't spoonfeed you anything. The character interactions and the plot are exceedingly well done though and there is not a dull moment in the book. How good is this book? Two weeks after finishing it, I am still thinking about it: its grippingly vivid and speaks poetically to the darkness and dangers of power. Tons of action, tons of interesting ideas. If you like good challenging sci fi, you'll love it. My new top three: The Golden Age trilogy, Against a Dark Background, and Sister Alice. Yes, it is that good.

Space opera often relies on the use of vast stretches of distance or time to imbue a sense of vastness into a story. In fact, a lot of the time "space opera" is just sci-fi jargon for "epic". But that depends somewhat on how epic you like your epics. Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series encompassed large chunks of the entire galaxy, with events stretching out for centuries. Frank Herbert's "Dune" masterwork took place over tens of thousands of years. But John C. Wright's "The Golden Age" unfolded "only" in our solar system, with one other star system getting involved, over the course of several weeks. Then there is Robert Reed's "Sister Alice", which manages to cram in half the galaxy and *hundreds of thousands* of years in 358 pages, without lapsing into the cheesiness that afflicts this sub-genre. In this compact epic, millennia pass with the flip of a page, whole worlds are shattered in a few short paragraphs, and years of near-light-speed space travel are conveyed as a meandering stroll down an icy beach. Beginning his tale about 10 million years in the future, Reed takes wholeheartedly to Arthur C. Clarke's famous observation that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". The main characters are members of an elite group of one thousand Familes that alone are allowed to possess mankind's most advanced -- and dangerous -- technologies. They command awesome powers capable of transforming cold, dead worlds into ones rich with life. They can create artificial structures the size of many solar systems. These abilities are referred to as "talents" and are usually some complicated piece of machinery crafted out of dark matter, the theoretical stuff that some scientists think accounts for the 90 percent of the universe we can't see but should be there. Talents are not only for mega-scale engineering projects. There are ones that target psychology and neuroscience, or use advanced logic bombs called "eschers" to assault computer systems. The story focuses on Ord, who at about 140 years old (if I remember correctly) is the baby of the Chamberlains, who terraforming skills have made them the most beloved and respected of the thousand Families. Alice, one of Ord's most ancient and talented sisters, has committed an error that threatens the entire galaxy. It falls to Ord to try to put things right while avoiding two childhood friends from rival Families who have been outfitted with the most advanced psychological and military talents to try to stop him. The writing is nothing short of excellent. Reed's terse, stark prose is well-suited to the light-years of hard vaccuum and cold mental isolation of the characters. In terms of writing and sheer inventiveness, I would put Reed up there on my shelves with Richard Paul Russo's amazing "Carlucci" series and John C. Wright's "The Golden Age" trilogy.

The first book I read by Robert Reed was Marrow. I so throughly enjoyed the book that I have since purchased and read several of his earlier novels. What impresses about this author is how easy his stories are to read. He make difficult concepts, difficult for those who don't read allot of science fiction, easy to understand. His character developement is wonderful. So much so it reminds me of how David Brin writes. You actually become attached to the characters. Another tribute I would add is that the author has a wide array of ideas. The premises of the Lee Shore, the Hormone Junglge", "Beyond the Veil of Stars", "Marrow", and now this book are as different as night and day. Too often an author will have success writing one type/style of book and then try to pattern future works along the same line. Invetibly the work gets stale (i.e. Larry Niven and yes, even Issac Asimov). I'll let the other reviewers describe the book in more detail. I just wanted to say that Rober Reed is the best science fiction writer that you've never heard of. I can't wait for his next book, the "Well of Stars".

Reed has created a fantastic but logically self-consistent galaxy of immortals descended from the original 1000 families chosen for immortality. The immortals know their roles in life. They are there to serve the all too mortal citizens of the galaxy. Their families once helped to avert a galactic war and, naturally, they profited from their endeavours but that is fair, isn't it?But what is a god to do when everything else has been done before, and so often? How can a god prove that he, or she, is truly godlike. How conceited can a god become? How far from hummanity, and all its foibles, is a god-like immortal? And why does this god choose to spend her time with the youngest, the baby?This is a wonderful book. It takes you on a fantastic journey from the edge of the galaxy to the wonder at its core.Reed's beautiful descriptive prose affords the reader a wonderous view of the galaxy of the immortals. He is clearly one of the top high concept SF writers of the modern age.