So far I've skipped through the audiobook only, but so far I've been appalled. This would be a challenging read for any narrator we are immersed in a world and assume the viewpoints of its inhabitants, who don't think it's strange at all. I was fascinated to know how a professional narrator would move through this story, dealing with its esoterica: from the subject-specific jargon to the neutral personal pronouns. How did the narrator detract from the book? In the constraints of the genre however, I thought they were all suited to their roles, but I don't have a favourite. As such it's heavily concept driven, and you read it for those, not for character-development. It's characters are not its strong feature. I would not, however, recommend this recording to a friend (see later answers). Egan's intricacy of detail is extremely worth persevering with, but it's dense and some passages require close scrutiny. I would recommend the story to a friend if they were up to the conceptual challenges the plot contains. Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not? The Orphan joins a group of citizens and flesher refugees in a search for the knowledge that will guarantee their safety - a search that puts them on the trail of the ancient and elusive Transmuters, who have the power to reshape subatomic particles, and to cross into the macrocosmos, where the universe we know is nothing but a speck in the higher-dimensional vacuum.įabulous Story, Disappointing Performance The fleshers left behind in the muck and jungle of Earth - some devolved into dream-apes others cavorting in the seas or the air while the statics and bridges try to shape out a roughly human destiny.īut the complacency of the citizens is shattered when an unforeseen disaster ravages the fleshers, and reveals the possibility that the polises themselves might be at risk from bizarre astrophysical processes that seem to violate fundamental laws of nature. Many of these have left the Solar System forever in fusion drive starships.Īnd there are the holdouts.

Others opted for gleisners: Disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction.

Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Since the Introdus in the 21st century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. A digital being grown from a mind seed, a genderless cybernetic citizen in a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knitting the Solar System into one scape, from the outer planets to the fiery surface of the Sun.

Diaspora egan