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Coalescent (Destiny's Children Book One) by Stephen Baxter
01/03/2004 . Source: Lucy A.E. Ward 
pub: Gollancz. 473 page enlarged paperback. Price: £12.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-575-07424-8. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
George Poole is an ordinary man with an unsatisfactory job. When his father, Jack, dies he returns to Manchester to finalise his father's humble estate. Returning to the urban landscape of his childhood, he has no idea that this visit will yield a mystery that threatens to destroy his life.
Baxter's attention to detail creates a wonderfully emotional beginning to this tale. As George pores through a lifetime's collection of belongings, the author grounds his fiction firmly in a real, domestic England. Attention is then thrown back in time to Roman Britain, following the growth of Regina - one of Poole's very distant relatives - and it is remarkable that Baxter maintains a similar level of familiarity as we move through his portrayal of villa life.
Regina's history is tied to George in a way he cannot imagine as he cleans up the cluttered house. He receives assistance from an old school friend, Peter McLachlan, a former detective who is, possibly, mildly autistic and has a talent for deciphering complex patterns. They find a photograph of a young girl sat next to an equally youthful George, someone he does not remember - not his sister, Gina, but a stranger with a very strong family resemblance.
Who is she? Where is she now? Why did George's relatives never mention her? Curiosity piqued, George sets out on a quest to unravel his family's hidden past. What he does not anticipate is a global conspiracy set in place to rebuff such efforts. The story spans the United States and Italy and nearly twenty-two thousand years of human history.
As such, Baxter offers fair warning of its time-leaping style in chapter two: 'Family stories are like that.' 'Episodic. No neat narrative structure.' So you can't complain as it hurtles from rural villa to Manchester, from roundhouse to modern Rome. You might, however, be disappointed by the lack of Science Fiction in the first 400 or so pages, if you had bought it based on the bold claims splashed across its cover.
It is a powerful blend of myth, history, science and imagination, but is it really 'proof positive that Stephen Baxter is perhaps the most important SF writer of his generation'? Most of the book is alternate history, but when the science kicks in it is inspired and thought provoking. Is it worth the wait? Hell, yes. By then you are absorbed by human intrigue, passion, insanity, sheer desperation for survival.
By then, you want to know all about The Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins, a quasi-Christianical Order who take possession of lost sisters, like George's, for their own inscrutable aims. What are their roots? What is their future? How does the appearance of a Kuiper Belt Anomaly or a Black Hole experiment tie in with their fate?
This book surprised me with its cold social scrutiny, casting a somewhat cynical eye over the past, present and future of our species. Rome is exposed as a representation of development and decay, restoration and degradation, pinnacle and abyss - our en masse fluctuating continuation.
Baxter's love of the city and its history is apparent, perhaps slightly overwhelming in places - Dark Age Europe pales into insignificance beside everything Roman, often paralleling Regina's attitudes. It is a triumph that the author managed to squeeze so much space-time into this novel.
And this is only the first in a series? Where on earth will the story go next?! I eagerly await its sequel.
Lucy A.E. Ward
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