There's a lot to love about this novel even though I have a few quibbles. My issues are purely personal in nature and do not reflect an actual fault in the novel, however.

First, the good:

We're split in the action between the digital new year coming up for us in about 25 years, at a time when Michael Poole has a stalled career and is still trying to overcome personal tragedy. The worldbuilding at this time is pretty awesome. Sentient houses and landscapes, severe environmental guilt that has led to us giving up cars in favor of virtual, and an extremely pragmatic outlook when it comes to recording genomes as so many species die.

Fast-forward half a million years in the future. Far beyond the conflict with the Xeelee, so many branches of humanity live and diverge and come back together again. Interestingly, the feel of this is very close to Olaf Stapledon's brilliant future history explorations, dealing with big species and existential issues in such a broad, astronomical space-and-time sense that I can't help but be awed by it.

Humanity has become as diverse and interesting as we could have hoped, adapted to any and all kinds of environments, developed symbiosis with alien biologies, techs, and even AIs. Some are undying, having lived a truly vast amount of time. Some are focused entirely on transcendence.

Interestingly, individuals in this far future are given the chance to be the ultimate observers for individuals in any portion of history. The MC in the future observes the MC of the past. Loves him. Feels his pain. And she is offered the opportunity to join the vast collective consciousness (augmentation) of the Transcendence.

The quibble:

The direction the transcendence takes is one of guilt and suffering, reliving every individual of humanity, of whatever flavor, and feeling their pain.

Yeah. Well, that's kinda the point of the novel, too, and it's rejected as the faulty logic it is. I'm not complaining about that. I'm only complaining that such an entitled future of humanity should fall into that trap in the first place.

But then, we've always fallen into worse, haven't we? lol



Even so, the novel is fascinating and filled to the brim with great ideas and techs and it falls into the full future history that Baxter has painstakingly built up. It's pretty amazing.

This novel does NOT need to be read in any particular order with any of the others. In fact, I might recommend it for anyone new to the SF mythos. :) ( )

This was really a decent "sort-of" finale to the series. Without spoilers, it closed out most of the plot lines and told a far future version of how things turned out.

Like many of Baxter's books, it felt smooth to read and the science of the science fiction was at least (generally) based in real science. In this case, often in philosophy as much as anything else. What happens to a humanity that is embroiled in a war that spans millennia? ( )

Life, the universe and everything - it has it all, from environmentalism to religion. I enjoyed book 1 in the Destiny's Children, book 2 left me a bit indifferent, however this episode has inspired me again. On several occasion I found myself drifting off as I pondered issues raised by Baxter. ( )

I agree with some of the readers who suggest reading Transcendent (book 3 in the trilogy of four ...) first. Thought you could read the second one last. Actually the order doesn't really matter. There are major and minor threads linking the first three books but the narratives are independent. You can enjoy them in any order. ( )

I could never really get into this book I did read it all but it is a very fuzzy memory for me.

Its about a girl who century's after earth has died from global warming that she is riding a space ship somewhere up there in deep blue space. She is not of our species anymore but she acts the same and is humanoid. This book is about her going on a journey to find out about this new universe and meet the many different species ( )