Raft
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The first book of Baxter`s Xeelee saga is a thought provoking and original book in itself. It`s basically a picaresque novel, where the hero wanders around in the new home of the descendants of a lost earth spaceship, the inside of a nebula in a parallel universe where the gravitational constant is much bigger than in ours. I don`t know enough physics to decide that the pictured environment is correct or not but the book without a doubt is an impressive read.
4.5/5

Timelike Infinity
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The second book of the cycle is also a fascinating read At the beginning of the book we learn that in he future Earth was conquered by an alien race. After that we got wormholes, time travels and living ships, all of them in a cosmic timescale. And at least we learn something about the mysterious Xeelee as well.
4.5/5

Flux
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What can I say? The third book of the Xeelee saga is just as much original, thought provoking and entertaining as the previous two. This time we can follow the fate of tiny humanoids living inside of a neutron star as they discovering the origin and the purpose of their own existence. And yes, the xeelees are there in the background again.
4.5/5

Ring
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The fourth book of the saga perhaps the most monumental of all, a travel through five million years, nicely incorporating the themes of the previous books. ( )

Xeelee is an omnibus book containing:

Raft
Timelike Infinity
Flux
Ring

The above four titles are linked to my review of each individual volume. The titles are ordered in the book by publication dates but I find that reading the books in this order did not work for me as Timelike Infinity and Ring are closely linked while Raft and Flux read more like standalones. Also, the settings of Raft and Flux are so weird that it may be easier to get used to Baxter's style and the Xeelee's back story through Timelike Infinity and Ring first. YMMV though. My recommended reading order for this omnibus would be:

1. Timelike Infinity
2. Ring
3. Raft
4. Flux

The books are works of jaw dropping imagination on an epic scale, all backed up by real world science. In fact a lot of the science is far above my comprehension but the plot tend to be easy enough to follow and the characters while fairly simplistic are likable enough. I can tell Baxter made a real effort to develop his characters, evidently not his forte but I appreciate the attempt. The dialogues leave something to be desired but I can forgive him that.

There are a few more books in the full Xeelee Sequence beside these four volumes but these should be enough for newcomers to the series to be getting on with. Recommended for fans of hard science fiction (if you are hard enough).

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Note:

Stephen Baxter has this to say about the reading order for the Xeelee Sequence:

"I hope that all the books and indeed the stories can be read stand-alone. I’m not a great fan of books that end with cliff-hangers. So you could go in anywhere. One way would be to start with ‘[b:Vacuum Diagrams|63960|Vacuum Diagrams (Xeelee Sequence, #5)|Stephen Baxter|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1287864018s/63960.jpg|62107]’, a collection that sets out the overall story of the universe. Then ‘Timelike Infinity’ and ‘Ring’ which tell the story of Michael Poole, then ‘Raft’ and ‘Flux’ which are really incidents against the wider background, and finally ‘Destiny’s Children.’"
(Source) ( )

Initially I thought this was an epic series, but it 's more-or-less a set of independent novels. Not quite what I was expecting, but then each novel delivers a though provoking story in its own right. Thoroughly enjoyable. ( )

This omnibus is formed of 4 individual tales that combine to make an epic tale that takes us to the end of time and across multiple universes.

It is operatic in time span and in decor, thought provoking and for once does not put humans at the centre of the universe. Despite the setting, it comes down to people who fight for their future, those who can't cope with thinking outside of the box and some who will live inside their bubble until it bursts around them. Human frailty doesn't change, despite differing bodies, sizes and universes. ( )