Book Review - Coalescent by Stephen Baxter

I'll admit, I only picked up this book because of its title. Being a geneticist and at the public library, I was like "awesome a cyperpunk novel about genetic engineering or something". Talk about sorely disappointed - the only reference to genetics mentions the uptick of genealogy DNA services (considering this book was written in the early 2000s that was oddly prescient).

This novel starts out fairly strong - then shatters like a wine glass on the side of the boat. The basic plot is that George Poole is dealing with his father's death, finds out he has a twin sister who was given to an ancient convent when they were four (tough economic times in Manchester), so he sets out to find her. The book basically also tells the story of his distant ancestor Regina - who was born to Roman royalty as the empire declines. Through a series of ever depressing events - she find her way to Rome and creates a secret society of relatives in the catacombs of Rome, which surprise eventually becomes a convent.

George is accompanied by his childhood friend, who turns out to be somewhat of a nutcase and attempts to blow up the catacombs because the convent is actually a new species of social insect humans - or a eusocial species like ants, bees, or naked mole rats (talk about fugly). So these "eu_nuns" have intercourse once then store the sperm and pop out kids at an elevated rate (one every four months). The book ends with a very confusing future war between the colony living humans and currently modern humans.

The strength of this book and really the most fascinating part was the history of Roman Britain and the subsequent break down of the empire. Here Baxter did a ton of research, less interesing is the eusocial aspect. This really should have been the focus of the story but instead he cloaks the idea until the end. By the end of the story I was the "&*^A^&^A" is going on. After I was done I found the story the first part of a triology - but you would hope the story would make sense on its own.

Not highly recommended.