Coalescent... by Stephen Baxter

Just finished this... absolutely stupendous!

Tiz sci-fi, but for at least the first half it reads largely like historical fiction. It is mainly 2 stories, in parallel: several decades in the life of a woman living through the Fall of Rome, who goes to extraordinary lengths to preserve the continuation of her family line... and a modern chap who, upon the death of his dad, goes on a quest to Rome to find his long lost sister. It is intriguing how the two tales merge and interconnect, but the intrigue is in gradually discovering the interconnections, so I won't give it away... except to say that it becomes about human evolution, hive-culture and the very modern idea of "emergence" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence and Steven Johnson's book on the topic). Great stuff! Big and ideas, told through the viewpoints of deep and emotive human characters.

Just started the next book in the series, which is set 25000 years into the future... I shall report back upon completion!

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