I don’t remember any particular setbacks or impasses at any point in the process, which is an extremely unusual thing for me, especially where novels are concerned. Unable to get within weapons range, Campion pursues Purslane’s ship for sixty thousand light years, during which time he and Purslane, on their separate ships, are suspended in "abeyance", a form of temporal slowdown or stasis.

So, when I realized that most of the characters in House of Suns were literal clones of the same character, I rolled my eyes a little and thought “Well, I guess that’s one way to get around the criticism. It´s sick and disturbing, but if a perfect android could, in a few centuries or millennia, teach, rear, and educate babies and kids with perfection humans are incapable of (no 24/7, jobs, mood fluctuation, no technology to detect any emotion, bodily function of the kid, etc.

Unfortunately, Campion, in a previous circuit, unwittingly uncovered information pertaining to the extermination.

There's a culture that is millennia old, that behaves with the self-indulgence and impetuousness of youth, and that has remained impossibly naive.All remember the upbringing of Abigail, their progenitor, in the mysterious, constantly-under-construction house of her childhood, as well as her time spent within the simulated world of Palatial (snippets of which we see in between parts of the main story). It feels like Reynolds is trying to pull of something big and can't quite pull the threads together. Actually, it would be kind of fun to pick up those characters again – there was so much more I could say about their society and customs and universe.

As Campion and the shatterlings are pursuing Purslane's hijacked ship, transmissions from Neume confirm that a shatterling within their midst, Galingale, is the traitor and a secret member of the House of Suns. Full too of pathos but also hope, an underlying belief that humans can and will survive, become something more than immature apes bent on destruction and go out and become part of the wider universe. With too much telling and not enough showing, he leaves little for the reader to speculate and infer. Shout-Out: This book is pretty much every single Alan Parson's Project song title smashed into a Space Opera screen play.

The above passage from House of Suns serves to illustrate the author's grandiose scheme for this book.