Shrine of Stars finishes up one of the most important trilogies in science fiction and fantasy since Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series. In his column in Science Fiction Weekly, SF critic John Clute calls Paul McAuley's Confluence trilogy a novel in three parts, comprising Child of the River, Ancients of Days, and Shrine of Stars, and best read all at once. Indeed, the narrative is seamless in this far-future tale of a man's birth, death, and rebirth as the savior of Confluence, an artificial world created by his bloodline on behalf of the almighty, departed Preservers.

At the beginning of Shrine of Stars, the hierodule Tibor and the reformed thief Pandaras begin searching for their master, Yamamanama, who has been captured by the sinister Dr. Dismas. A feral machine possesses Dismas with the intent of using Yama's newly ripened powers to alter the course of the worldwide war in favor of the nihilistic heretics. Dismas infects Yama with the offspring of his own paramour, and the young man finds himself unable to control machines, call to his friends, or stop Dismas and the military monster Enobarbus from bending him to their will. It falls to faithful Pandaras to find and rescue his strangely altered master, setting in motion a course of events that will mean the end of Confluence and the beginning of the Preservers' plan for the rest of time. As ever, McAuley's sentences flow beautifully together, linking ideas like a string of fabulous and strange pearls.

Yama is both savior and destroyer in McAuley's story, and the agent of irrefutable change echoing the role of Severian in Wolfe's New Sun books. As John Clute so adeptly points out, where McAuley diverges from these past masterpieces is in his big finish. Shrine of Stars removes Yama from the confines of Confluence and puts him fully in charge of the vast forces of cosmology. By embracing his ultimate humanity, Yama rejects both the notion that the only way to achieve independence is through selfishness, and the possibility that the Preservers have named his destiny. Instead, he names his own. --Therese Littleton


From Library Journal
Captured by his archenemy, Dr. Dismas, the remarkable young man known as Yama fights a dual battle against an internal and an external enemy in order to achieve his true destiny. Set in a far future in which humans have abandoned the known worlds, leaving behind them a plethora of created races, McAuley's conclusion to his galactic trilogy, "The Books of Confluence," reveals the cyclic nature of the universe and the infinite variety of creation. Richly detailed and lyrically told, this volume belongs in most sf collections. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.



"A flavorful stew...the spectacle becomes colossal and the action reaches fever pitch."



"[A] marvelously sustained cosmogonic romance of the far future..."



"A flavorful stew...the spectacle becomes colossal and the action reaches fever pitch."



"A powerful epic that could be one of the most important in recent SF."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Hundreds of different races, created and then abandoned by the Preservers, co-exist on the artificial planet called Confluence. But the end of the world is drawing near, hastened by the terrible civil war that rages at its midpoint.

Caught in the center of the strife is Yama, the last of the bloodline that constructed Confluence. A young man whose awakening powers have made him a weapon coveted by both sides in the brutal conflict, Yama is determined to seek out answers to the mystery of his birth—in order to fulfill an astonishing destiny that even he cannot begin to imagine.

FROM THE CRITICS

John Clute

[A] marvelously sustained cosmogonic romance of the far future...

Locus

A powerful epic that could be one of the most important in recent SF.

Washington Post Book World

A flavorful stew...the spectacle becomes colossal and the action reaches fever pitch.

New York Review of Science Fiction

Some books you read, and upon finishing realize that while it may have been good, you probably won't read it again. Others you know you will. Then there are the books which you not only instantly know you will read again, but will get more out of them the second time. The Book of Confluence belongs to this last category.

Washington Post Book World

A flavorful stew...the spectacle becomes colossal and the action reaches fever pitch. Read all 9 "From The Critics" >

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