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This is the third book in the Destiny’s Children series. This is actually more of a sequel to Coalescent than Exultant was. As with the previous two books there are 2 story lines intertwined. One is set just after Coalescent, and includes many of the characters from that previous book, and the 2nd story is set half a million years in the future! 🙂
Interestingly the stories do come together. I really enjoyed it. So much so in fact that I resented having to do other things when I was reading it. I’ve got the 4th book in the series sitting here to read. It contains a series of short stories set over the time of the other 3 books.

Just finished Exultant by Stephen Baxter. This is the 2nd book in the Destiny’s Children series, and is nominally a sequel to Coalescent. As outlined in the comments to the previous post about the 1st book Exultant isn’t really a direct sequel. It has none of the characters from the first book in it, and it is set 25,000 years in the future. However it is a sequel in the sense that the ideas in the book about humanity and their relationships are core. Exultant outlines a story against a backdrop and history that has seen humanity near extinction after Earth was occupied by aliens; the overthrow of the occupation; and then the expansion of humans throughout the Galaxy over many millennia with wars against other aliens on the way. One war against the Xeelee aliens has been going on so long that it has become the norm and has been a stalemate at a front near the centre of the Galaxy for 3,000 years. Exultant tells the story of the humans engaged in the war on the front (and the appalling attrition they endure – 10 billion killed every year). There is a focus on a few individuals to carry the story forward. It also intertwines their story with the efforts of one of the ruling class from Earth to find a way to end the 3,000 year stalemate and find a way to end (win!!) the war. I really liked it. It’s a good hard sci-fi story that spans the galaxy, whilst at the same time getting down and dirty with the combat troops and spacecraft pilots engaged in battle.

Some of the themes that are developed in Coalescent are also in this book. Such as the way human communities can develop a goal orientated existence or as hive-like structures over time to help ensure the survival of the species as a whole. This is evident to a minor extent in the way the soldiers who are bred, born and die for the war deep in the heart of the Galaxy bond together in their fight for humanity (even though they have never, and will never visit Earth), and in a major way in the eusocial colonies that are glimpsed in the book (the archive on Mars).

Just finished Coalescent by Stephen Baxter. I’ve had this sitting on my bookshelf for a while *. After recently rereading the brilliant Hellstrom’s Hive by Frank Herbert, I was thinking about a sequel to the Herbert book. I’d love to read more about the human colony in HH. What did the Government do about the hive and Project 40? What happened when the first swarm left the hive? How did the Outsiders react to the swarm? What happened to the normal humans as the number of hives increased? Did the hives take over all the Earth? Were there conflicts between hives in the future? Did any hives raid others and make slaves of the drones (like insects do)? Did colonies spread out into space in the far future? And so on. There is a lot of scope to tell more stories in the Hellstrom Universe I think.

So I did a search to see if Frank Herbert had ever talked about a sequel. And turned up a Wikipedia page on Stephen Baxter’s Coalescent. The Wikipedia entry references HH in the See Also section of the page. By no means is Coalescent a sequel to HH. But it does have at its core a similar idea. Both focus on a colony of humans who have built habitats underground over time and as a result of selective breeding have adapted and evolved in a different way. HH is a harder edged sci-fi story than Coalescent. The latter has two stories that come together at the end. One of set in modern times and outlines a mans search for a twin-sister he only recently discovered existed. The other tells the story of a child, then women, who grew up in post-Roman Britain and of her fight to preserve her family. A fight that ends up in Rome itself and the founding of the underground colony when Rome is sacked. The 2 story lines do come together at the end. I really enjoyed it. Recommended. I’ve got the 3 follow-up books on order (in fact they tried to deliver them when i was out, so I’ll have to go collect them from the post office).

I also found an interview with Kevin Anderson, who is working on the Dune prequels and sequels with Brian Herbert, that he would like to explore the HH universe at some point. Can’t find it at present to link to it.

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* Actually I’ve got just over 60 (yes sixty!) books at present that I’ve bought over the last year that I want to read. There are 22 popular science books, 36 fiction and about 10 in business, atheism and stuff. That’s going to be my recreation over the summer. So expect a few posts in the Books section here!!