Short Book Review: Exultant by Stephen Baxter

In the distant future, humans have been at war for millennia with the Xeelee, a mostly unknown alien race with near god-like technology. Fighter pilot Pirius disobeys standard procedure and manages to save his ship during a battle near the galactic core. Due to his faster-than-light drive, he returns to his base two years before he left. Both he and his younger self are court martialed, with the "older" Pirius sent to the front as an infantryman, and the "younger" Pirius being collected by a government bureaucrat, who has a plan to end the war, and returned to Earth.

I generally enjoy Stephen Baxter's novels because they are filled with "big" ideas, and this one is no exception. In most SF with FTL travel, the author ignores one of the side effects of traveling beyond the speed of light, that there will be conditions where closed time-like curves occur, and causality is violated. In this novel, time travel is fairly common, with ships arriving from the future on a regular basis. The information from the future is used in the planning and fighting of the war.

Most of the book is a travelogue, as the younger Pirius goes around the solar system of the distant future, working on the plan to end the war. The characterization and plot are OK, but not anything noteworthy. As always with Baxter, it's the ideas and imagination that make this book worth reading. Note that this is actually the second novel in a series with "Coalescent" being the first. It is not necessary to have read "Coalescent" (which takes place in modern day Earth) to enjoy "Exultant".

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.