House of Suns - Reception

Reception

Lisa Tuttle reviewing for The Times called the novel a "thrilling, mind-boggling adventure" and said "as well as visionary brilliance, Reynolds also supplies a knock-your-socks-off ending."

Zack Handlen of the A.V. Club writes that Reynolds is particularly adept at conveying the vastness of space and the "inky blackness of the void," adding that House of Suns "keeps up the tradition of forward thinking while improving on the genre’s traditionally flat prose and clumsily drawn women. An immensely thrilling, mind-bending piece of work, House looks to the center of all that emptiness and finds its beating heart."

At SF Signal, a reviewer notes that a "sense of wonder is where this book excels," adding that "Reynolds is playing on a galactic-sized canvas and uses believable science to back up his grand ideas...his yields mind-boggling time scales, where millennia pass by like days."

George Williams in his review for The Australian said that "the concepts explored in House of Suns are so far removed from our time, and even from much of the standard fare of science fiction, that parts of the book border on fantasy. The author does carry off a story conceived on a scale rarely seen in science fiction. The weaknesses of the book relate to some of the old staples of novel writing. While the pace picks up at the end, it starts too slowly and at times the plot meanders. The novel may be filled with rich ideas, but neither of the two leads compels interest and the relationship between them is underdeveloped. It is a pity that these aspects of the book fail to achieve the same heights as the universe in which it is set."