Book Review – The Thousand Emperors

by Gray Gibson (Pan Macmillan) ISBN 9780230748781

In the future Earth has been destroyed. Humanity now lives on its former colony worlds which are split in two.

After the split the human race began to change, or rather one side did. Now the worlds of the Coalition and the worlds of The Thousand Emperors are about to be brought back together. Can they accept the changes or will they be driven to war?

At the same time the murder of one of the “immortal Emperors” in charge of reunification starts an investigation that will reveal the true nature of what it means to be human.

I liked this book for its logical and terrifying depiction of the directions the human race is heading in. The story is a classic crime thriller set a couple of hundred years in the future. The science in this science fiction is underwhelming but it never feels like magic and that’s frankly the way it should be. It is also not obsessed with getting this just right. This leaves you feeling you are not just reading a series of descriptions and that there is a definite story in there.

Space-ships, lasers, clones and doomsday weapons. Classic stuff.

Christopher Dean

3.5/5

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