Shrine of Stars (Confluence) - Softcover

At the beginning of Shrine of Stars, the hierodule Tibor and the reformed thief Pandaras begin searching for their master, Yamamanama, who has been captured by the sinister Dr. Dismas. A feral machine possesses Dismas with the intent of using Yama's newly ripened powers to alter the course of the worldwide war in favor of the nihilistic heretics. Dismas infects Yama with the offspring of his own paramour, and the young man finds himself unable to control machines, call to his friends, or stop Dismas and the military monster Enobarbus from bending him to their will. It falls to faithful Pandaras to find and rescue his strangely altered master, setting in motion a course of events that will mean the end of Confluence and the beginning of the Preservers' plan for the rest of time. As ever, McAuley's sentences flow beautifully together, linking ideas like a string of fabulous and strange pearls.

Yama is both savior and destroyer in McAuley's story, and the agent of irrefutable change echoing the role of Severian in Wolfe's New Sun books. As John Clute so adeptly points out, where McAuley diverges from these past masterpieces is in his big finish. Shrine of Stars removes Yama from the confines of Confluence and puts him fully in charge of the vast forces of cosmology. By embracing his ultimate humanity, Yama rejects both the notion that the only way to achieve independence is through selfishness, and the possibility that the Preservers have named his destiny. Instead, he names his own. --Therese Littleton

* Already Paul J. McAuley is a better novelist than most of the established giants in the field’ Time Out

* McAuley is part of a spearhead of writers who for pure imagination, hipness, vision and fun have made Britain the Memphis Sun Records of SF’ Mail on Sunday