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"An epic tale of visionary futures and scientific speculation." --Library Journal Millions of years from now, humanity will be on the brink of self-destruction. The world's great leaders have created an elite group who, by their superior wisdom and abilities, keep the peace, maintain progress, and otherwise safeguard humanity's future. Genetically enhanced, they are the carriers of Earth's greatest talents, a force unlike any in the history of mankind. For ten million years, the Families dominated the galaxy. But then Alice, a brilliant scientist of the Chamberlain family, took part in an attempt to create a new galaxy. Her experiment unleashed vast forces that the family could not control, causing a catastrophe that killed untold billions of people on many worlds. Before she was punished for her role in the debacle, Alice visited Ord, a younger Chamberlain. Only he, of all the people in the galaxy, knows what Alice tells him. Her words launch him upon a quest that will take him across the vast reaches of space. He must discover his own true nature, and somehow restore the family honor. Sister Alice is his epic story.… (more)
User reviews
This book is fun to read.
This suspense has a flaw - its conclusion, which is unsatifying. Having painted a huge stage, filled it with grandiose characters and hinged the very universe on the plot the final few scenes fail to live to their billing.
However, after such a good read quibbling over a final few paragraphs is minor criticism.
Brian Aldiss' description of a certain kind of science fiction as
Add to this intrigues between the thousand Families who make up the ruling caste of super-humans, and we have another large-scale novel from Robert Reed.
Although I sometimes have problems with novels where the protagonists start engaging in metaphysical finger-painting and intellectually grappling with the space-time continuum (when some novelists start doing this sort of thing, they tend to overlook minor issues like 'plot' and 'characterization'), in this case I was pleased that Reed kept us quite well-focussed. Characterization in particular was quite well-done and certainly better than some of his earlier novels; and although some of the plot became quite abstract, by concentrating on individual protagonists, the novel didn't lose its way.