Description:

COALESCENT is the first of a trilogy of novels that does nothing less than tell the story of mankind's possible evolutions and our role in the Universe. Coalescent charts a radical divergence in our evolution; the development of a human hive entity. It is a divergence that has its roots in the dying days of the Roman Empire. The story is told through twin narratives; one takes us through the falling apart of the Roman control of Britain as seen by one girl, the other covers a man's search for a lost sister. A sister who may be living as part of an ancient and secretive order in Rome. Through these diverse personal stories Stephen Baxter charts a story that has terrifying consequences for what we thought was our place in the world, our perceived natural ascendency in the order of things. Things are going to be very different now ... ** ### From Publishers Weekly Known for his hard SF, Baxter (the Manifold trilogy) explores social and historical issues as well as human evolution in the first of his Destiny's Children trilogy, with mixed results. In the present, George Poole discovers that he has a twin sister who belongs to a mysterious, ancient quasi-religious order in Rome; in crumbling post-Roman Britain, Regina, founder of the order, longs to recapture the days of her girlhood, when she lived a life of stability and privilege. In alternating chapters, George and Regina each make their way to Rome. George meets his sister and begins to learn something of the order that took her in; Regina-complex, bitter, obsessive-crafts the order that lasts to George's day. Regina digs under the streets of Rome into catacombs for secure living space. George, distantly related to Regina, feels the familial pull of the women still living in the warrens underground, but when he befriends a young, pregnant member of the order, he realizes that they have evolved into a new life form, a coalescent one comprising drones working within a decentralized social order. Regina's carefully researched world never quite comes to life-Baxter tells rather than shows-and the feminist implications of a coalescent life form that exploits and alters femininity are not addressed. Still, Baxter provokes thought by plausibly creating specific circumstances that result in evolution. For now, it's unclear whether a coalescent structure is good or bad, though presumably later books will provide some resolution. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. ### From Booklist Baxter connects the lives of George Poole in the present and Regina at the end of the Roman empire. George's father has just died, and the picture of a girl, Rosa, comes to light in his effects. Rosa is the mysterious twin George never knew, and he becomes consumed with the desire to find her. Regina's part of the story begins in Britain at the end of Roman rule and takes her through the western empire's collapse to Rome itself. Back to the near-past: George's sister, it develops, had been sent to the Order of Mary, Queen of Virgins, which has existed, hive-like, in Rome since the time of Regina, one of its founders. George is Regina's descendant, and the order being rather a family affair, George arrives at many uncomfortable realizations as he learns more about it. Opening with an artificial anomaly discovered in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and ending with disturbing extrapolation of humanity's future, *Coalescent* is a fabric of many slowly developed plot threads woven into a tight tapestry. *Regina Schroeder* *Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved*