Exultant

Rating:
Summary: Not too good
Review: As a fan of Stephen Baxter, I was pretty disappointed in this book. Really poor characterization, poor dialog, uninspiring plot. It really can't hold a candle to any of the "Manifold" series. I got to within sixty pages of the end of "Exultant" and put it down. What's the deal?

Rating:
Summary: exciting look at a seemingly bleak future
Review: Humanity has been at war with the Xeelee for three thousand years. Thanks to FTL spaceships that enables movement through time the aliens know what humans are going to do before they do it. Although the future is always in a state of flux and mankind has one great advantage over the Xeelees in that the human population is so much greater than the Xeelees, which enables them to confine the enemy to the center of the galaxy.

Humanity has not been able to penetrate the alien base operations at Chandra the black hole although millions have died trying. While trying to evade a Xeelee ship, pilot Pirius ignores his orders by fighting the enemy; he manages to catch the alien spaceship, something never done before. He brings it back into human space two years in the past where he meets his seventeen-year old self. Both are put on trial for disobeying orders. The older Pirius is transferred to a penal asteroid while the younger version is taken under the wing of Commissary Nilis who believes the young man will be a great help to finally resolving the Xeelee problem.

Although there are two Pirius in this story about, the future history of mankind depends on the younger version who has not been battle scarred and believes in the mission the Commissary is pursuing. Stephen Baxter's; second installment of "Destiny's Children" is nothing short of brilliant as it shows a future in which mankind is brought up to fight a war and die young, not leaving a trace of their passing. EXULTANT is an exciting look at a seemingly bleak future that one hopes never happens.

Harriet Klausner


Rating:
Summary: A Great Read, but...
Review: I immediately purchase any new book by Mr. Baxter, he has been a favorite author of mine since Raft. I know of no other science fiction author so fascinated with the questions of why the universe exists and where it is going. You also will not find too many authors willing to kill off the entire earth as a plot device; when something goes horribly wrong in a Baxter novel, the entire universe past, present and future is at play.

That said, I was just a little disappointed in Exultant. The theme of a stagnant civilization delivered from entropy by the heroic actions of the protagonist has been visited too many times in this genre. As with all of Mr. Baxter's works there is no shortage of thought-provoking ideas, but this work failed to integrate the ideas. The exposition of the true nature of the black hole at the center of the galaxy just didn't work--by the time our hero makes his fateful choice this reader didn't have enough invested in the whole question to really make a value judgment, which seemed to be the whole purpose of the work.

The galactic civilization stuff has been done before. Coalescent was brilliant: made you really think about issues of human evolution and possibility. Exultant would get a much higher review had I not been familiar with Mr. Baxter's other works. He remains on my "must purchase" list and I will anxiously await his next effort.




Rating:
Summary: Awesome ideas jumbled with bad plot and dialogs
Review: I would definitely call Stephen Baxter's Exultant an interesting book, but I would be hard-pressed to recommend it to anyone. It has some very exciting SF concepts, but they are buried in a plot that makes so litle sense and dialog that will make you cringe.

Baxter is a man of ideas, but it seems he is too busy pondering grand concepts to put them in the proper context of a good story. There are truly mind-boggling concepts; even too many, it seems, because some have barely a page or two of development. The most extreme was 'Concept space', a mind-boggling concept which is used merely to provide a deus ex machina solution to the protagonists.

If at least the hard SF was solid enough despite the weak plot... As it happens, some concepts are hastily thrown together, then conveniently circumvented when they are no longer required. The whole "FTL Foreknowledge" concept, for instance, at the heart of the story, can be waived by the author when he needs the protagonists to fool the Xeelee. Their solution? Use the time-honored but 'risky' 'anti-Tolman manoeuver', which is never explained nor used again. Sigh.

Another pet peeve I simply cannot let pass: Commissary Nilis. Nowhere is this guy made sympathetic, with his bumbling attitude, his obvious lack of oratory skills, his habit of walking barefoot everywhere and his smelly feet and armpits(!) Yet he is seen more often than any of the main characters, because he can send Virtuals of himself to annoy all of them at every corner of the Galaxy at the same time. Whenever he let slip a 'My eyes!', I was ready to gouge my own out of their sockets.

If you're wondering whether to pick up this book because it is the sequel to 'Coalescent', then don't. Only passing references are made to Coalescent, and the difference in quality between the two books is such that it seems Exultant was written by a 13 year-old who got excited at reading Coalescent.

If you must read a Stephen Baxter book, there are much better ones than this one. Coalescent and Manifold:Time are both excellent Baxter novels. This one is not.

Rating:
Summary: A rare sympathetic look at humans in Xeelee universe
Review: This book is the next in a series, after the first one,
(Coalescent). When read the first few pages in
Exultant, I got very confused, because it never dawned on
me that Coalescence (which I liked), which takes place from
Roman Imperial times to the early 21st century, took place in
Baxter's Xeelee universe.

Baxter has been writing about humans and Xeelees for
a long time, and until now, humans had been painted as
complete fools in the conflict. The whole plot device for
Xeelee / Human conflict in all the Xeelee
books has so many holes (for example,
since there's a constructive method to what that
Xeelees are doing, and since humans are giving them
trouble, why don't the Xeelee tell humans what is going on?)
that I'd have been happy to never read another Xeelee book.
This book causes me to change my mind. We get a more in-depth
view of human society during the prime of its galactic
empire, and a lot of characters that Baxter makes us
care about (a rarity for Baxter). Not to mention a lot of
interesting hard science ideas as one should expect from a
Baxter novel.

The linkage between Coalescent and Exultant is far
from obvious, other than a few encounteres with coalescent
humans in Exultant which could have been discarded.
Perhaps it will become clear in the third installment.

Rating:
Summary: "middle of the road" Baxter...
Review: This is a decent but not great book but is a must read for any Baxter fan mainly because it finally shows mankind actually FIGHTING the Xeelee. I had a little trouble deciding who to root for. Traditionally, mankind are usually the bad guys when it comes to Baxter's "Xeelee" books. Having read "Ring", I already know that the Xeelee are actually working toward a greater good, so why root for the humans to disrupt their work? I did find it a little contrived that humans who have been stagnating for 1000 years can suddenly develop exotic weapons and defenses just because some old guy decides that it is time to do so. It still didn't seem as if we could actually "hurt" anybody considering the Xeelee are capable of building structures on a galactic scale... Otherwise, I was a little disappointed that there were no great revelations here and we still don't get to actually meet a Xeelee. There were however many aspects I did like. The epic scale of the war was awe inspiring. I also enjoyed the side plot depicting the rise and fall of the lifeforms who lived in the very first moments of the creation of the cosmos. That is classic Baxter at his finest. Minimally, I would not read this book unless you have read "Timelike Infinity", "Ring", and "Vacuum Diagrams".