Shrine of Stars: : The Third Book of Confluence (Confluence, Book 3)

Rating:
Summary: The Capstone of McAuley's Far future epic
Review: At the end of book two, we've left Yama, our hero, at the mercy of his heretic enemy Dr. Dismas, and seemingly without hope of escape, even as his faithful friend Pandaras struggles to find and free him. So begins the final volume of Confluence. The Great River continues to dry up, the factions of Heretic and Prefect Corin's Department continue their war...and Yama slowly changes from the pawn that he was, to a far greater importance on the "board". McAuley does a credible job tying up most of the loose ends and brings Yama's story full circle. We learn at last the nature of Confluence, and get a look at why the Preservers built it, and what its ultimate fate should be.

Its a bit of a criticism on an otherwise magnificent work, but I think the last half of the book relies TOO much on tropes from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun novels, especially URTH OF THE NEW SUN.

By the end of the book, however, this reviewer was more than satisfied with the arc of Yama's story. Even with mining the same terrain as Wolfe, the Confluence series is a far easier read--more SF, less allegory.

One last editorial bit. I bought the first and subsequent books of Confluence in hardcover since they were published in that "small, $14 edition" that made getting a hardcover practical. I wish more publishers would publish books this way. Confluence was a definite keeper and I look forward to re-reading it more than once.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant work
Review: Dr. Dismas continues to hold Yama prisoner while the Tibor and former thief Pandaras search for their incarcerated master. A machine possesses Dismas with the intent of using Yama's newly ripening 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.

Yama is unable to control machines, call to his friends, or stop Dismas and the monstrous Enobarbus from bending him to their will. Even if Tibor and Pandaras can rescue their strangely behaving friend and master, it appears that the end of Confluence and the beginning of the Preservers' plan for the rest of time has been set in motion.

SHRINE OF STARS completes up one of the best and most complex science fiction trilogies in many years. The Confluence trilogy consists of three strong tales (CHILD OF THE RIVER, ANCIENTS OF DAYS and SHRINE OF STARS) that work at their most powerful when read back to back to back. Though SHRINE OF STARS is a superb, thought-provoking tale, like ANCIENTS OF DAYS, new readers will have questions that the previous book answered. Still, the outstanding story line of the final tale centers on the last builder Yama staggering into a war between the torpid leadership and the heretic believers of Angel. Will Yama turn into the savior or destroyer of Confluence? To find out, fans must read the only rival to Gene Wolfe's mantle, Paul J. McAuley's excellent novels.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A Rushed but Beautiful Conclusion
Review: First, one must clarify and emphasis the total and complete dependence "Shrine of Stars" has to the preceding volumes of Confluence. For those of you that are considering reading this book, it will not make sense unless you read "Child of the River" and "Ancients of Days" first. In fact, I see little reason (except for girth) that these weren't published as a single volume with a few of the 'remember from the last volume' details edited out.

On to the books. One reviewer commented that too much is jammed into this third volume, and I agree. What one ends up with is almost a series of intensely imaginative summaries. The locales change so frequently, as do the flora and fauna. Each environment is so different than the last, and eachis packed with enough loving details to support a novel of its own. The magic McAuley is able to display works its best in "Child of the River". There, the pacing is right for the language of description and the wonders of Confluence. In "Ancients of Days", one gets the sense that McAuley is rushing to the end... too excited and unable to withhold his 'big idea ending'. And as for that, the ending isn't really a big idea. It's an old, well-trodden idea. Upon the book's completion, I felt similar to many of the other reviewers: cheated by what felt masterfully tacked on; underwhelmed by what should have been explosively overwhelming. But upon reflection, I see the wisdom of it. The ending serves its on perfect purpose. It wraps the work and the place of Confluence up into an egg-like shell, giving birth to imagination and a galaxy ready for life.

If there is such a thing as a premature opus, this is it. The moments of Confluence that are so terrible are only so because the rest is so good. No reader of imaginative and thought provoking fiction should go without reading this trilogy at least once. If anything, just for the beautiful writing that is so rare in the genre.

Rating:
Summary: A Rushed but Beautiful Conclusion
Review: First, one must clarify and emphasis the total and complete dependence "Shrine of Stars" has to the preceding volumes of Confluence. For those of you that are considering reading this book, it will not make sense unless you read "Child of the River" and "Ancients of Days" first. In fact, I see little reason (except for girth) that these weren't published as a single volume with a few of the 'remember from the last volume' details edited out.

On to the books. One reviewer commented that too much is jammed into this third volume, and I agree. What one ends up with is almost a series of intensely imaginative summaries. The locales change so frequently, as do the flora and fauna. Each environment is so different than the last, and eachis packed with enough loving details to support a novel of its own. The magic McAuley is able to display works its best in "Child of the River". There, the pacing is right for the language of description and the wonders of Confluence. In "Ancients of Days", one gets the sense that McAuley is rushing to the end... too excited and unable to withhold his 'big idea ending'. And as for that, the ending isn't really a big idea. It's an old, well-trodden idea. Upon the book's completion, I felt similar to many of the other reviewers: cheated by what felt masterfully tacked on; underwhelmed by what should have been explosively overwhelming. But upon reflection, I see the wisdom of it. The ending serves its on perfect purpose. It wraps the work and the place of Confluence up into an egg-like shell, giving birth to imagination and a galaxy ready for life.

If there is such a thing as a premature opus, this is it. The moments of Confluence that are so terrible are only so because the rest is so good. No reader of imaginative and thought provoking fiction should go without reading this trilogy at least once. If anything, just for the beautiful writing that is so rare in the genre.

Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Future Saga, But One That's Overrated
Review: I haven't read Paul McAuley's other books in his Confluence trilogy, but he is certainly deserving of praise as one of the better writers working in Anglo-American science fiction. That said, however, I did not find "Shrine of Stars" as mesmerizing or as profound as Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" saga or Gene Wolfe's science fantasy series, such as the "Book of the New Urth". Science fiction fans interested in reading great literature that's thematically similar to McAuley's Confluence trilogy would be well advised to read instead the works of Simmons and Wolfe. Yet those interested solely in entertainment should find McAuley's work both pleasurable and intriguing.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing finish to a great trilogy
Review: I was a great fan of the first two novels in this trilogy of Confluence. The third and final novel in McAuley's telling of the Confluence is a mixed bag with a beginning similarly well written, but an ending that is unsatisfying to the reader.

McAuley seems to compress far too much in Shrine of Stars, rather than let the story build it's way to a finale, he jams so many scenarios and near misses that the reader becomes a little jaded towards the end. Time after time the antagonist(s) reappear after you think they have been eliminated. The effect is that you're never surprised that another antagonist shows up again (in fact the question becomes: which one will appear next?).

But most importantly McAuley lets the reader down. After almost three books where Yama looks for his human bloodline, the results are disappointing and not really worthy of the buildup the author coaxes the reader to expect.

One wants to know more about humanity: what happened, why and so on. Instead the meeting becomes another mini-adventure in a trilogy of mini-adventures that ends in disaster for humans. And still there's no really fulfilling explaination of the past. After three novels what a disappointment! The ultimate end is of an unsatisfying "loop of time" variety.

There is a part in Shrine of Stars where Dimas tells Yama that he can tell him all about the history of humanity, why Confluence exists and what exactly happened. Yama's reply is that he doesn't want to know.

Yama might not want to know, but the reader does.

Rating:
Summary: Shrine of Stars
Review: McAuley's Confluence trilogy sets forth a new standard for SF to follow. Fully realized and philosophical, engaging and epic in scope, awe-inspiring and enigmatic. Shrine of Stars is remarkable and engrossing, and the Conflue trilogy has all the makings to become an SF classic, and required reading by SF enthusiasts everywhere. Gary S. Potter Author/Poet.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant capstone to an outstanding far-future epic
Review: Shrine of Stars concludes Paul J. McAuley's Confluence trilogy in very impressive fashion. These books have not quite got the notice I think they deserve, for a couple of reasons. Most important might be that the trilogy concludes with its strongest volume, for the best reasons.

In the first volume, Child of the River, McAuley sketched a strange world with many wonders, and introduced an intriguing main character, Yamamanama (fortunately called Yama by most of the characters). This world, Confluence, is an artificial construct, built thousands of years ago at the behest of the Preservers (apparently descendants of Earth humans), by their servants the "Builders". The Preservers then populated the world with thousands of "bloodlines", apparently "uplifted" animals, as well as the "indigenous" races, apparently aliens of some variety. In the first volume all this is presented as mythic history, and the book has the feel of fantasy. Yama, it is hinted, is the last remnant of the bloodline of the Builders. He sets out on a journey up the huge River of Confluence to the capitol city, Ys, while a long war rages on between the Heretics and the established authority of Confluence. Over the first two books, Yama journeys to Ys, then back down the river to his home. He becomes involved in the war, and meets many of the bloodlines of Confluence, as well as remnants of humans from long before Confluence, and he learns much about his own, very considerable, powers.

Many mysteries are introduced in the first two volumes, and they are slowly dispelled. But in Shrine of Stars, McAuley actually delivers on the implied promise of the first two books: the nature of Confluence, and the nature of Yama, and the answers to the mysteries of the first two books, are all revealed in logical and satisfying ways. In the end the three books are clearly, unambiguously, far future Science Fiction, in a way that for example such models as Jack Vance's The Dying Earth and Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun aren't, quite. This is both good and bad, but it seems to be entirely McAuley's intention. That is, the remaining mysteries, and the religious symbolism, of Wolfe's great tetralogy are a feature certainly intended by the author: and in many ways they enhance the book. It may be that that is the reason I still consider Wolfe's series better than The Book of Confluence, or it may be simply that as good a writer as McAuley is, and he's quite good, Wolfe is still better. But at any rate such comparisons, though inevitable, aren't quite fair to McAuley's work: in the end, he has written an individual work, with its own plan, its own intentions, and I think he succeeds marvelously.

Shrine of Stars, thus, follows Yama and Pandaras after they are separated, as Yama begins to be possessed by a machine implanted in his body, and as Pandaras tries to find Yama, unwillingly bringing Prefect Corin back on Yama's trail. After many trials, Yama comes to full understanding of himself, and of his fate. There are very explicit religious echoes (including a plan for Yama to be executed on a structure of wood), but even as McAuley emphasizes these echoes, he provides rational and consistent explanations for them all. Finally Yama must make a journey off Confluence to another planet, and he must come to a solution to the problem of the future of the bloodlines of Confluence that deals with the apparent coming destruction of Confluence. His solution is satisfying, and McAuley neatly wraps up the series with an ending that is perhaps reminiscent of Charles Harness, only a bit more logical. This is one of the better extended works of SF in the last years of this century, in many ways a fine capstone for a long history of "far future" SF.

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bunch
Review: The third book in McAuley's series is very different from the first two, especially in the last 100 pages. The author actually changes the subject pretty much, and because of this the book feels quite unpolished, like two stories mixed into one. The whole saga is not rounded to the reader's complete satisfaction, but it is interesting nevertheless.

The first part deals with Yama's imprisonment with the heretics and it gets 2-3 stars from me. It's a little bit too gory and bloody, like a B-movie.

I agree with the reviewers who have remarked that the bad guys don't stay dead at all and keep showing themselves, it gets irritating after a while.

Another aspect which bothered me were the overdetailed descriptions. It seemed like the author had a painting in front of him, with every little thing precisely shown, and wanted to accomplish the same descriptive level. But it was a little tiresome and boring. Also, since we now know that the 10000 bloodlines come from Earth's animals, it would be nice if they were identifiable... I suspect the author tried to do this -- Tamora was a fox? Pandaras a rodent? -- but it seems he didn't succeed.

That being said, we get to the finale, which in my opinion it was beautiful. (Note: I haven't read the Heinlein story referred to by one of he reviewers, so perhaps I was more inclined to feel that the concepts are original and intriguing.) True, a lot of information and concepts are crammed in, the pace changes, the ending is not quite what the reader expected... but this is acceptable in my opinion. It's even better that the story does not end in a classical way and that the hero doesn't quite find what he was looking for. I was also suspecting from the beggining that we wouldn't find out more about the Preservers and that not all questions will be answered.

I liked the cyclicity of everything, with every end representing a beginning.

What I didn't like was the character development throughout the entire series. The bad guys are one sided, and the good guys don't seem to evolve at all. Even Yama, all his revelations are external, he stays linear. You don't quite catch his depth.

There are influences not only from Gene Wolfe -- although I think any book that deals with characters in an artificial environment which have devolved from the knowledge on their forefathers will invariably be compared to his works -- but also from David Brin's uplift saga, the concept of species "raised" to sentience.

For all its shortcomings, the book was quite captivating and interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Ho Hum
Review: There is something to be said about "surprising" plot twists, but they are usually more interesting when they seem to have any connection to the rest of the story. Trying not to spoil what the "twist" is, I'll only say that in case it looks like an excuse to try and repeat a Heinlein short story concept, mainly because the conclusion seems tacked on and not integral to the story at all.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that the individual elements aren't bad, but the whole is not blended together in a powerful or moving way, which is disappointing for a book with a theme of self-discovery. It just reads, to me, like a story that happened, not a story that drew me in and made me feel like I was living it, or that I'd ever ever want to read again.

I'm surprised that the series gets such a strong rating.

EDIT: Someone compared this series to the writings of Gene Wolf. Since I'd heard other good things about that author before, and was interested on seeing why they made the comparison, I read his "Book of the New Sun" series. Let me just say that how strong the New Sun series is just further points out how this series is lacking. What I criticize in in this series are the strengths (among others) of what Gene Wolf has written. That said, the similarities give me hope for Paul McAuley's future work.