Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes I think Baxter is a hit-or-miss kind of author, thinking he goes over the same ground in rather interesting new ways, but when I think about it... His George Poole characters are all rather... DIFFERENT. Yes, yes, George Poole is here, again, but the kind of story told isn't spanning the world or the galaxy or all of time... this time.

Rather, we've got a rather cool Roman historical romance (of a kind) that brings together old English history and the Celts in rather awesome ways while jumping back to the current time in a cool family history mystery.

I was frankly entertained. Both sides of history (and later on, a future history,) were fascinating and thrilling and reminded me at times of Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio, a historical drama, and a first-contact SF. All three are wonderful and at some moments I was reminded of Poul Anderson's The Boat of a Million Years. That's high praise. :)

I'm into this enough that I have to jump on the second book right away. After all, we're talking about a full transformation of humanity into a HIVE MIND!

Yay! It's what I asked Santa for Christmas! ;)

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