House of Styx

By: Derek Kunsken

Narrated by: Justine Eyre

Brought to you by Penguin.

Life can exist anywhere. And anywhere there is life, there is home.

In the swirling clouds of Venus, the families of la colonie live on floating plant-like trawlers, salvaging what they can in the fierce acid rain and crackling storms. Outside is dangerous, but humankind's hold on the planet is fragile and they spend most of their days simply surviving.

But Venus carries its own secrets, too. In the depths, there is a wind that shouldn't exist.

And the House of Styx wants to harness it.

(P) Penguin Audio and Rebellion Publishing 2020

Critic reviews

"A boldly ambitious debut."

"An audacious con job, scintillating future technology, and meditations on the nature of fractured humanity."

"Künsken has a wonderfully ingenious imagination."

"Technology changes us-even our bodies-in fundamental ways, and Kunsken handles this wonderfully."

"I have no problems raving about this book. A truly wild backdrop of space-opera with wormholes, big space-fleet conflict and empires.... What could go wrong?"

"This brainy sci-fi heist novel uses mathematics like magic to pull you through a caper worthy of Jean-Pierre Melville."

"The Quantum Magician is the type of book you go back to the beginning and read again once you know how everything pans out and have those 'why didn't I see that the first time?' moments."

"A delightfully engaging heist story."

"The Quantum Magician is a space adventure built on the scaffolding of a classic con job movie (think The Italian Job or Ocean's Eleven). It hits all the right beats at the right time, and part of the fun in reading it is wondering: what will go wrong? Who will betray who? What will be the reversals? When done well, as in the case of The Quantum Magician, it's a delight to read."

"The Quantum Magician feels like what would happen if Locke Lamora landed in Bank's Culture, and if Locke had a lot to say about depraved humans. And I do love me a con artist story! Also? The writing is brilliant, the pacing is damn near perfect, the dialog is fun and snarky, the characters are great, I couldn't put this book down!"

Imaginative Sci-Fi!

Overall, I enjoyed the story. There were a few lulls in the book, but the story is interesting. I am hoping that in the next installment, we get to explore the most interesting aspect, which I will not spoil in this review. It was talked about, but not yet thoroughly explored. There are multiple LGBTQ characters in the story, which is fine, but not statistically realistic given the population size.
I didn't really like the narrator. Her voice make it sound like she's reading the novel in distress. It puts a general damper on the whole story and makes the characters seem a little more depressing than I thinks was intended.

A fantastic book

I liked the entire book, but Pascal's and Marde's perspectives were especially interesting. Another excellent example of world building from Kunsken and a lively narration by Eyre

tinny performance, book feels padded

Just me or did it sound like the audio fidelity was low? did the narrator have exactly the right higher pitched voice that doesn't record well somehow? it was annoying how loud I had to turn the car radio up sometimes to clearly hear what was going on.
As to the book: it could have been 100 pages shorter if you cut out the surprising amount of teen same sex/trans romance. I don't read straight romance novels either. halfway through it decided to stop being an angst-filled romance novel at which point it got much better. Except it then ends before the really interesting parts! looks like two more books to read. not as continuously fun as the quantum magician stories, but very entertaining and fascinating world building again.

Amazing story full of Triumph and Turmoil

Künsken does an amazing job of building characters with incredible depth and breath in a beautiful science fiction universe. This is a story about family and personal discovery. The far future setting adds to the story with out distracting from it. I have recommended it to numerous people and will certainly read it again.

Unsure if it's just me

I should have loved this, an inclusive hard sci-fi novel, with fascinating world-building, a diverse cast and a deep mystery at it's core. But I spent the first third obsessing at the narrator's distracting vocal tics, and the rest being irritated at the slow plot and lack of enjoyment in the story. Towards the end I forgot the fact the narrator sounded like she was trying to squeeze out a poop at the end of every sentence, and that her french was indecipherable. I started to respect her depth of feeling and commitment to the characters. But the story dragged, and nobody had a good time. Ever. The interesting plot points, the hook I was there for, just never had centre stage. Instead, I got the feeling the author had lost track of what readers want. Long descriptions of every journey through the clouds, never jumping to interesting action, plodding narrator by narrator advancing the plot step by step with no style surprises.

SPOILER:

And then... The death of one of the more positive and interesting characters right before the end... It was such a downer. I don't understand why the author thought it would be a good thing to do. I would have stopped listening there except there was only 15 minutes left. I already had the sense the author didn't know why we were reading on and this just lost my investment completely.

So, maybe it was just me, but I found this dreary and boring. While the plot and action and character development could have gripped me deeply, it felt like the camera was always pointing at the wrong place...