The Children Star

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Two hundred years after the events recounted in Slonczewski's Daughter of Elysium, little has changed in the confederacy of human worlds known as the Fold. The wealthy, near-immortal technocrats of Elysium still dominate Fold politics, and the Sharers still promote environmental concerns. On L'li, the population explosion continues with millions dying from malnutrition and disease. On Prokaryon, colonization proceeds slowly because each human colonist must undergo a painful process of genetic adjustment in order to survive on the planet. One successful colony there has been founded by a religious order, the Spirit Callers, who have devoted themselves to the rescue of L'liite orphans. Most of the other colonists on Prokaryon, both human and sentient machine, are small-scale miners or scientists working to uncover the planet's 'hidden masters,' the perhaps mythical intelligences behind Prokaryon's suspiciously regular ecology. Both genetically altered colonists and indigenous life forms are threatened when an avaricious Elysian capitalist determines to take over Prokaryon for his own private domain. The main characters -- Brother Rod, a Spirit Caller; Sarai, a renegade Sharer; 'jum, a six-year-old mathematical genius; Khral, an uplifted simian geneticist -- all are soon engaged in a race against time to uncover the secret masters of Prokaryon and save the planet. Slonczewski, a noted biologist, has written a novel that features enough absorbing material on genetics and planetary ecology to satisfy any aficionado of hard SF. At the same time, she tackles a wide range of moral issues, from overpopulation to ecological responsibility and the ethics of machine intelligence. Remarkably, Slonczewski accomplishes all of this in a story that is not only exciting but also is filled with memorable characters, human, alien and sentient machine.

Library Journal

A small colony of orphaned children and their mentors, genetically altered to survive in the fertile yet inhospitable environment of the planet Prokaryon, fights to prevent a galactic bureaucracy from claiming and terraforming its adopted world. As scientists and researchers comb the planet for signs of indigenous intelligence, a few insightful individuals discover that their planet's salvation lies within its smallest inhabitants. Set in the same world as Door Into Ocean and Daughter of Elysium, this novel offers a dazzling array of alien life and a cast of memorable characters. Slonczewski's imaginative and compelling tale of transformation and renewal belongs in most sf collections.

Glenn Jonas

. . .[M]oves toward its denouement at a glacial pace but with unequivocal force. . . .Some pardonable fireworks aside. . .this novel's fireworks in the final third admirably justify its long, slow fuse. -- The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

Another tale set in Slonczewski's distinctive far-future universe, the action here taking place some two centuries after that of Daughter of Elysium. Planet Prokaryon's native biochemistry is poisonous to humans, so those who wish to live there must be genetically modified; infants adapt rapidly, but adults take years to adjust. The life-reverent Spirit Callers, led by the human Brother Rod and a couple of Sentients (artificial intelligences who have 'woken up' and earned their freedom) named Geode and the Reverend Mother Artemis, have started a colony comprising orphan children rescued from the plague-stricken planet L'li. Oddly, though no intelligent life-forms have been found, Prokaryon's flora grow in orderly ranks, it rains only at night, and if forest fires break out, rainstorms at once extinguish them. The colonists eke out a living from farming and trading in gemstones, until the immortal Elysian, Nibur, gains control of the planet and orders them to evacuate (Nibur proposes to sterilize the continent and lease it for development). Rod, Artemis, and Sarai, a biology-whiz Sharer who's doing research, must prove that Prokaryon's life-forms are sentient in order to thwart Nibur's plans. Problem is, these intelligences appear to be the size of bacteria, and none of the visiting officials and bigwigs will believe them until they attempt to leave Prokaryon, only to discover that they've been infected with the brainy microbes! Beautifully constructed and absorbingly related, but many will find Slonczewski's thinking-bacteria notion (cf. Greg Bear or Michael Kanaly) very hard to swallow.