Reviews

Sternenkinder by Stephen Baxter

finlaaaay's review against another edition

4.0

More of a straight-up space opera from Baxter, set in the far future at a key moment in an interspecies war. A lot of mind-bending ideas, and a lot more in-depth look at the Xeelee than there has been in previous books of the series. Very clear that he's got the whole thing mapped out and he's only feeding us bits and pieces of it.

Characters were fine, not my favourite though.

corymojojojo's review against another edition

4.0

While I deeply love Baxter’s early Xeelee novels, it it interesting to see how much he’s improved as a writer in the Destiny’s Children series so far. I do think Exultant is a great book for hard sci-fi fans, and while I think it’s a better book than his early stuff, I didn’t quite enjoy it as much. Mostly I think this comes down to the fact that Exultant is very much military sci-fi, the first mil sci-fi book in the series, and frankly I’m just not all that interested in military plots. That being said, there’s still a lot to like here. I loved that Baxter dove into the origins and background of the Xeelee, something that he typically shrouds in total mystery, and even though I usually love that the Xeelee are often more illusive, Baxter doesn’t hold back when it comes to their crazy, astrophysic-heavy lore.

l1ll1's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark informative mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

fancybone's review against another edition

3.0

I liked it, but "trench warfare in space" kept breaking my suspension of disbelief.

fdallachy's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

What seems on the surface a military sci-fi novel (which is not particularly common ground for Baxter), gradually widens its scope to explore the origins not only of the author's Xeelee species, but the origins of the universe itself. The main plot can drag a little - the characters are not hugely engaging, although the pace is fast enough that I didn't lose interest. If you're here for the fighting, though, you're reading the wrong book - as usual, Stephen Baxter is really interested in the ways societies and species develop over time, and the way reality itself works. This isn't really a sequel to 'Coalescent' (the first of the Destiny's Children sequence), but rather the series appears to be developing a thematic unity around stories of young people caught up in moments of history; nonetheless, the plot is deeply embedded in previously established Xeelee sequence chronology. I don't think you need to have read any of the other books in the sequence to understand this one, but there's far greater resonance, I suspect, to a lot of the developments and revelations if you have. Looking forward to reading the third book, 'Transcendent'.

postfuerml's review

4.0

Eine wunderschöne Reise durch ein Sonnensystem, das sich... aber lest selbst. Ich fand's wunderbar.

universalhat's review against another edition

4.0

I just cannot read the first book in any Stephen Baxter series first. I always always always start with a non-first.

Oh well at least I didn't start with the last one this time, like I did with the Xeelee sequence.

quiddity's review against another edition

2.0

I really enjoyed the embedded idea/sub-sections about the formation of life at the very start of the universe. The rest, not so much.

xerxes314's review against another edition

4.0

After the digression of Coalescent, Baxter returns to his familiar settings of mind-bending physics and far-flung futures. This book reminded me a bit of The Forever War, but is a bit better done. Where Forever has relativistic effects, in Exultant we get full-on time travel shenanigans. Both feature the disfunctions of military life, cover-your-ass bureaucracy, meaningless wars and pointless loss of life. However, Baxter does a better job with the physics and ideas. Neither do a particularly great job with the protagonist, but I liked Baxter's supporting cast with the mysterious prophet, the hand-wringing Commissar and the bloodthirsty immortal.

The parts about the true nature of quagmites and Xeelee were familiar to me from other works, so their big reveals lacked some of the punch I think they were meant to have. I guess this is one of the problems with linking so many books into a grand saga like the Xeelee Sequence; there are only so many big secrets the universe can be hiding.

One thing I really liked was the careful descriptions of the Galactic core. I was almost done with the book by the time I realized all the locations were real. Arches cluster, Quintuplet cluster, IRS-16, baby spiral: all real; look them up, they're so cool.

One thing I didn't like so much was the physics of the gravastar shield. As a physicist, I can assure you that

any spacetime from which you can rejoin your original universe will allow a closed timelike curve to send information about you back into your past. Fundamentally, the gravastar shield cannot prevent Xeelee foreknowledge of an attack, since the attack itself must occur in our usual universe. That said, I guess it's possible the Xeelee did foreknow about the attack but decided to leave the Galaxy to humans anyway. Still, kind of a big plot hole.

But we can allow that when the rest of the story does such a fine job exploring the wonderful history of our universe and its physics.