Originally published inOne Million A.D., and also available in the collection, Beyond the Aquila Rift.

It soooo good to be back from all that multi-universe nonsense and into some real sci-fi from Alastair once again.

This story is superb.   Essentially, it's fracture yourself into one thousand clones, known collectively as a "line", and send them off on a trip around the galaxy to see what they can discover.   At the end of the trip all the clones meet up a pre-determined place and time and download each other's holiday journal, known as a "thread", into their own minds.   Whoever is determined the best thread gets to decide on the location and setting of the next reunion after the next trip around the galaxy.

There's quite a few rules and a fair bit of etiquette to all this to keep things interesting and sensible, but when some people don't appear to be playing by the rules and conforming to the etiquette, others start to have suspicions.

I really like the idea of this and if you do too you'll be happy to know that Belladonna Nights is next in the trilogy with House of Suns straight afterwards, so there's plenty more still to come. ( )

Ce roman court d'Alastair Reynolds est un huis clos spatial centré sur la découverte d'un meurtre puis sur l'enquête qui en découle, dont l'intérêt réside plus dans le le monde mis en place par l'auteur que dans l'intrigue et sa résolution. L'imagination du romancier britannique fait mouche mais ses personnages paraissent un peu trop écrits, ne parvenant pas à avoir leurs vies propres et laissant ainsi le lecteur extérieur au complot qui est découvert et aux décisions que doivent prendre les deux protagonistes. La lecture est néanmoins agréable et donne envie de lire d'autres aventures situées dans cet univers. ( )

This novella, the precursor to Reynold's novel "House of Suns", has all the same epic time scales and sweeping scope of that book, with more intimate character portraits of his protagonists, Purslane and Campion. The action takes place almost exclusively at one extended family reunion, and like the novel, involves the unmasking of a traitor in the ranks. The writing made it very easy to imagine myself as a multi-million year-old space traveler with the world weary experience of one of these characters, and the mystery was rather fun to unravel as well. The final reveal was satisfyingly breathtaking and truly worthy of Reynold's reputation as a master of modern Space Opera. ( )