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Exultant (Destiny's Children) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Far ahead, bathed in the light of the Galaxy's center, the nightfighters were rising..." (more)
Key Phrases: crew blisters, photino birds, starbreaker beams, Luru Parz, Pirius Blue, Pirius Red (more...)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Military SF fans will relish the second entry in Baxter's Destiny's Children trilogy, set long after the events recounted in 2003's Coalescent. When navy pilot Pirius and his crew violate protocol during a skirmish with the alien Xeelee and end up capturing a ship from "mankind's most ancient and most powerful foe," instead of accolades, two versions of Pirius—Pirius Red and Pirius Blue, from different time lanes—receive punishment. Pirius Red accompanies the eccentric Nilis (we know he's odd because he never wears shoes) to the Earth system to research the captured ship and concoct a way to end the war, while Pirius Blue is sent in disgrace to the Xeelee front for army combat training. As Pirius Red explores the solar system, picking up clues to create a strategy to defeat the Xeelee by striking at their home system, Pirius Blue narrowly escapes death in combat and grows into a leader. Both come to question the doctrines that guide their lives as they realize the extent of their military conditioning. Weak characterization mars an otherwise well-told story as fast-paced action sequences flip to long, dry discussions about physics. Not content with one drop-dead hard-science idea, Baxter concatenates them, one building on the other; even his aliens represent ideas. Female readers may wish the author would take some lessons on portraying romance from Sharon Shinn.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–In humankind's Third Expansion, the species has spread throughout the galaxy and assimilated all challengers but the mysterious Xeelee; in a 20,000-year stalemate, humans have kept them at bay in the galaxy's center. Time travel (used by both sides to gather intelligence) creates numerous "drafts" of time lines, but apart from this uncertainty the endless war has brought about a strangely static human society. Soldiers and pilots are bred in vats near the Front and taught only war; few survive past their teens. When Prius, a young pilot, captures a Xeelee ship and takes it to the recent past for study, an innovative program is begun to develop new weapons technology. While Prius Blue (the pilot from the future time line, now stuck in this one) is sent to the Front, the younger Prius Red (from this time line) must travel throughout the solar system with an eccentric but brilliant scientist in a quest for knowledge needed for the anti-Xeelee weapon. Working with widely differing elements of society, Red learns many secrets he'd rather not know, adjusts to new knowledge, and grows into a leadership role: he heads up Exultant, the elite squadron tasked with deploying the new weapon. Even in a genre characterized by unfettered imagination, Baxter's future universe is extraordinary in its depth, breadth, and richness of invention. Cutting-edge physics, subtle humor, time-travel paradoxes, and loopy twists combine to give readers a wonderfully original sci-fi experience. It can be read independently of Coalescent (Ballantine, 2004), which is set in the same universe but mostly in the present age.–Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Del Rey; Book Club (BCE/BOMC) edition (November 23, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0345457889
  • ISBN-13: 978-0345457882
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,164,292 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Stephen Baxter
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Front Cover | First Pages | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Far ahead, bathed in the light of the Galaxy's center, the nightfighters were rising. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
crew blisters, photino birds, starbreaker beams, spacetime defects, asteroid dirt, birthing tanks, asteroid ground, comm loops, gray shield, data desks, sublight drive, quantum functions, maintenance bots, inertial field, timelike infinity, asteroid dust, reality dust, accretion disc, neutrino telescope, ice moon, infalling matter, ops room, primordial black holes, target rock, event horizon
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Luru Parz, Pirius Blue, Pirius Red, Enduring Hope, Prime Radiant, Port Sol, Silver Ghost, Arches Base, Commander Darc, Orion Rock, Hama Druz, Minister Gramm, Barracks Ball, Marshal Kimmer, Captain Marta, Michael Poole, Tili Three, Baby Spiral, Commissary Nilis, Officer Country, Grand Conclave, Service Corps, Captain Seath, Exultant Squadron, Ultimate Observer
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Futures by Peter F. Hamilton
 

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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars "middle of the road" Baxter..., January 25, 2005
By Brian K. Ralli (Roseville, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is a decent but not great book but is a must read for any Baxter fan mainly because it finally shows mankind actually FIGHTING the Xeelee. I had a little trouble deciding who to root for. Traditionally, mankind are usually the bad guys when it comes to Baxter's "Xeelee" books. Having read "Ring", I already know that the Xeelee are actually working toward a greater good, so why root for the humans to disrupt their work? I did find it a little contrived that humans who have been stagnating for 1000 years can suddenly develop exotic weapons and defenses just because some old guy decides that it is time to do so. It still didn't seem as if we could actually "hurt" anybody considering the Xeelee are capable of building structures on a galactic scale... Otherwise, I was a little disappointed that there were no great revelations here and we still don't get to actually meet a Xeelee. There were however many aspects I did like. The epic scale of the war was awe inspiring. I also enjoyed the side plot depicting the rise and fall of the lifeforms who lived in the very first moments of the creation of the cosmos. That is classic Baxter at his finest. Minimally, I would not read this book unless you have read "Timelike Infinity", "Ring", and "Vacuum Diagrams".
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read, but..., January 3, 2005
By J. Brian Watkins (San Dimas, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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I immediately purchase any new book by Mr. Baxter, he has been a favorite author of mine since Raft. I know of no other science fiction author so fascinated with the questions of why the universe exists and where it is going. You also will not find too many authors willing to kill off the entire earth as a plot device; when something goes horribly wrong in a Baxter novel, the entire universe past, present and future is at play.

That said, I was just a little disappointed in Exultant. The theme of a stagnant civilization delivered from entropy by the heroic actions of the protagonist has been visited too many times in this genre. As with all of Mr. Baxter's works there is no shortage of thought-provoking ideas, but this work failed to integrate the ideas. The exposition of the true nature of the black hole at the center of the galaxy just didn't work--by the time our hero makes his fateful choice this reader didn't have enough invested in the whole question to really make a value judgment, which seemed to be the whole purpose of the work.

The galactic civilization stuff has been done before. Coalescent was brilliant: made you really think about issues of human evolution and possibility. Exultant would get a much higher review had I not been familiar with Mr. Baxter's other works. He remains on my "must purchase" list and I will anxiously await his next effort.


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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Awesome ideas jumbled with bad plot and dialogs, December 14, 2004
I would definitely call Stephen Baxter's Exultant an interesting book, but I would be hard-pressed to recommend it to anyone. It has some very exciting SF concepts, but they are buried in a plot that makes so litle sense and dialog that will make you cringe.

Baxter is a man of ideas, but it seems he is too busy pondering grand concepts to put them in the proper context of a good story. There are truly mind-boggling concepts; even too many, it seems, because some have barely a page or two of development. The most extreme was 'Concept space', a mind-boggling concept which is used merely to provide a deus ex machina solution to the protagonists.

If at least the hard SF was solid enough despite the weak plot... As it happens, some concepts are hastily thrown together, then conveniently circumvented when they are no longer required. The whole "FTL Foreknowledge" concept, for instance, at the heart of the story, can be waived by the author when he needs the protagonists to fool the Xeelee. Their solution? Use the time-honored but 'risky' 'anti-Tolman manoeuver', which is never explained nor used again. Sigh.

Another pet peeve I simply cannot let pass: Commissary Nilis. Nowhere is this guy made sympathetic, with his bumbling attitude, his obvious lack of oratory skills, his habit of walking barefoot everywhere and his smelly feet and armpits(!) Yet he is seen more often than any of the main characters, because he can send Virtuals of himself to annoy all of them at every corner of the Galaxy at the same time. Whenever he let slip a 'My eyes!', I was ready to gouge my own out of their sockets.

If you're wondering whether to pick up this book because it is the sequel to 'Coalescent', then don't. Only passing references are made to Coalescent, and the difference in quality between the two books is such that it seems Exultant was written by a 13 year-old who got excited at reading Coalescent.

If you must read a Stephen Baxter book, there are much better ones than this one. Coalescent and Manifold:Time are both excellent Baxter novels. This one is not.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars an engrossing read
this book sort of seems like the odd one out when compared to the other novels in the destiny's children series (coalescent and transcendent are more like each other), but i... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Akira Touya

4.0 out of 5 stars Space Opera at its (almost) best
Space Opera at its (almost) best. Galactic War, interesting alien races, new societal concepts, time travel, hard science: Exultant has it all. Read more
Published on June 15, 2007 by Adam Missner

4.0 out of 5 stars A little more space opera than normal for Baxter
Another reader characterized this work as "space opera." In fact, that's what Baxter has produced here. Read more
Published on September 7, 2006 by Alex J. Avriette

5.0 out of 5 stars Great imagery
I read this one after "Transcendent". I liked Exultant much better. Actually, I like Transcendent better now than after first reading it because of the way some of the... Read more
Published on June 27, 2006 by Tyler Forge

3.0 out of 5 stars A bit too scattered
Probably should have been titled "Conglomerant." It's main value may be its multiple insert chapters which overview the how and why of the Baxter multiverse. Read more
Published on January 18, 2006 by CampfireDan

5.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative, well written science fiction
If you like science fiction you will like this book. It is imaginative, has some original ideas, and you care about the characters. Read more
Published on December 21, 2005 by Margaret Dybala

2.0 out of 5 stars What happened to the series?
This certainly isn't the book I expected after reading Coalescent. Where Coalescent was an interesting exploration of how a new form of human society could form, and had fairly... Read more
Published on November 23, 2005 by royalcolornetwork.blogspot.com

4.0 out of 5 stars Shades of Ender's Game
After "Coalescent", I swore that I would not read "Exultant", but there it was, on the table in the bookstore, right there just a foot away, beckoning. So I caved. Read more
Published on November 20, 2005 by Seachranaiche

1.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't even finish the book
This is sci-fi gone wrong. It is all ideas and science, and nothing else. The plot is a joke, I found myself going, "What??," and shaking my head many times. Read more
Published on August 9, 2005 by J. Lindsay

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite exultant over Exultant
Exultant is the story of a pivotal event in the millennia-long human-Xeelee war. As such the book takes place in Baxter's familiar future history universe that has served as the... Read more
Published on May 14, 2005 by James Tepper

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