The Tabit Genesis in SpecFic Buddy Reads

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Jul 20, 2016 Lindsay rated it really liked it

Warning: Unannounced book one of a series with no indication of when/if there will be more books or how many in the series. The author has no recent web presence either. This book does reach a climax, but many of the story-lines in it just reach a good stepping off point for the next book.

The Tabit Genesis was one of two huge ark-ships sent out from Earth to find and colonize a new home for humanity because of Earth's failing environment. As it turns out, this was extremely timely because five y Warning: Unannounced book one of a series with no indication of when/if there will be more books or how many in the series. The author has no recent web presence either. This book does reach a climax, but many of the story-lines in it just reach a good stepping off point for the next book.

The Tabit Genesis was one of two huge ark-ships sent out from Earth to find and colonize a new home for humanity because of Earth's failing environment. As it turns out, this was extremely timely because five years after the ark-ships left the Earth and solar system were invaded by incredibly advanced aliens. But that was hundreds of years ago, and now there's a thriving civilization around the solar system where the Tabit Genesis ended up, albeit a space-based one, because the planet they were targeting turns out to have been uninhabitable.

In the Tabit system there are "firstborns", an overall minority of people that are direct descendants of the settlers from Earth and "ghosts", an overall majority descended from amniosynthesis, an artificial gestation process. There are also the Houseworlders, so genetically engineered that they may no longer be considered human.

The system consists of three major societies: the inner system, which is dominated by firstborns with ghosts as second class citizens, the belt and outer rim which is ghost-peopled and controlled and the far outer planets or Houseworlds which are very separate cultures created from early breakaways of the Tabit colony.

The story follows people from all three societies as well as some interludes from a human intelligence that has direct experience of the alien Raothri invaders. It's a time of upheaval as the inner system nears completion of a massive advanced starship that ostensibly will continue the original mission of the Tabit Genesis but actually presents as an enormous next-level weapon to bring the entire system under inner-system and firstborn control. It is inevitable that the outer rim will respond, and the Houseworlds get drawn into the conflict. Meanwhile, people mining the system's largest gas giant discover that the life forms that exist in the atmosphere there may be much more than they appear.

This is an intricate book with a huge amount of world-building. Comparisons to other huge space opera writers is apt (Peter F. Hamilton leaps to mind), but Gonzales seems to have forgotten to make many of his characters likable. For instance, two of his main characters have significant drug problems and mental health issues accordingly, and another of his characters seems hell-bent on self-sabotage even when given an obvious out. Hell-bent on self-sabotage describes pretty much the whole human race in this book though and it does cast a pall over proceedings. While humanity is obsessed with class-conflicts and petty grasps for power without compromise the Raothri are an inevitable, if not immediate, threat.

I enjoyed this in the end, and the last half flew by, but if you're interested I would suggest you hold off until more information is forthcoming about whether there will be more books in the series. ...more

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Aug 09, 2016 Helen rated it liked it · review of another edition

A low 3.

A bit too sciencey for me, not enough story. I also got fed up with switching between so many POVs, I didn't like them all. That said, the idea was interesting enough and some characters quite fascinating. ...more

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Jul 07, 2016 Teanka marked it as to-read

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