Coalescent FROM THE PUBLISHER
Things are going to be very different now... Sisters matter more than daughters. Ignorance is strength. Listen to your sisters.
As the light of the Roman Empire gutters and fails, one woman begins a remarkable quest to protect her family. It is a quest that will last 2000 years and threaten everything we know.
In present-day England, George Poole is looking for his long-lost sister. It is a search that will take him to Rome and into the heart of an ancient secret. A secret that holds a terrifying truth for all our futures.
Whether telling the vivid story of a dying Empire, charting the compelling history of a city, or detailing chilling evolutionary possibilities for mankind, Coalescent is never less than an enthralling piece of storytelling.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Known for his hard SF, Baxter (the Manifold trilogy) explores social and historical issues as well as human evolution in the first of his Destiny's Children trilogy, with mixed results. In the present, George Poole discovers that he has a twin sister who belongs to a mysterious, ancient quasi-religious order in Rome; in crumbling post-Roman Britain, Regina, founder of the order, longs to recapture the days of her girlhood, when she lived a life of stability and privilege. In alternating chapters, George and Regina each make their way to Rome. George meets his sister and begins to learn something of the order that took her in; Regina-complex, bitter, obsessive-crafts the order that lasts to George's day. Regina digs under the streets of Rome into catacombs for secure living space. George, distantly related to Regina, feels the familial pull of the women still living in the warrens underground, but when he befriends a young, pregnant member of the order, he realizes that they have evolved into a new life form, a coalescent one comprising drones working within a decentralized social order. Regina's carefully researched world never quite comes to life-Baxter tells rather than shows-and the feminist implications of a coalescent life form that exploits and alters femininity are not addressed. Still, Baxter provokes thought by plausibly creating specific circumstances that result in evolution. For now, it's unclear whether a coalescent structure is good or bad, though presumably later books will provide some resolution. (Dec. 2) FYI: Baxter has collaborated with Arthur C. Clarke on two novels, the first of which, Time's Eye, is due in January. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
The death of George Poole's father sparks George's discovery of a twin sister he never knew and evidence of a secret society called the Order. His quest takes him from England to Miami and, finally, to Rome, where he confronts the reality of a new kind of humanity. This tale from the author of the "Manifold" trilogy and Evolution takes place on two levels-the near future and the distant past amid the ruins of the Roman Empire. Excelling at both action-packed storytelling and philosophical speculation, Baxter's latest belongs in most sf collections. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
First of a new three-book series, Destiny's Children, imagining the future course of human evolution. Upon the death of his father, middle-aged computer programmer George Poole returns to Manchester, where he meets old friend and neighbor Peter McLachlan, now a member of a weird group called the Slan(t)ers. Pondering his family-his maternal grandfather was an Italian-American GI; his sister Gina now lives in Florida-George discovers an old photograph showing him with a twin sister! Equally strange, his father made substantial monthly payments to a secretive Catholic organization in Rome. But what happened to George's twin? When questioned, Gina proves curiously hostile and professes to know nothing; but she gives George the names of other American relatives who might know more. Meanwhile, alternating chapters relate the story of Regina, a noblewoman born during the last days of Roman Britain. Early in the fifth century, the legions leave, commerce collapses and brigandry increases; Regina's father commits suicide, and her mother flees to Rome. Eventually, Regina, via King Arthur's camp, makes her way to Rome to found a mysterious organization-the same organization that, shaped by Regina's distinctive social engineering, has survived and prospered for 1600 years. But what did it want with George's twin sister, and how is George himself involved? Among the complications: a huge, tetrahedral object discovered orbiting in the Kuiper Belt, and Slan(t)er paranoia about an invisible war between all-but-imperceptible dark-matter aliens. Baxter (Evolution, Feb. 2003, etc.) will never win prizes for style, but he's much more convincing when he writes about physical science and engineering (theManifold series) than biology: Tepid.
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