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Riley, a veteran of interstellar war, is one of many beings from many different worlds aboard a ship on a pilgrimage that spans the galaxy. However, he is not journeying to achieve transcendence, a vague mystical concept that has drawn everyone else on the ship to this journey into the unknown at the far edge of the galaxy. His mission is to find and kill the prophet who is reputed to help others transcend. While their ship speeds through space, the voyage is marred by violence and betrayal, making it clear that some of the ship's passengers are not the spiritual seekers they claim to be.
Like the pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a number of those on the starship share their unique stories. But as tensions rise, Riley realizes that the ship is less like the Canterbury Tales and more like a harrowing, deadly ship of fools. When he becomes friendly with a mysterious passenger named Asha, he thinks she's someone he can trust. However, like so many others on the ship, Asha is more than she appears. Uncovering her secrets could be the key to Riley's personal quest, or make him question everything he thought he knew about Transcendentalism and his mission to stop it.
James Gunn's Transcendental is a space adventure filled with excitement and intrigue that explores the nature of what unifies all beings.
"Starred Review. Impeccably plotted, with absorbing human and alien characters and back stories, Gunn's narrative expertly cranks up the tension and paranoia as, piece by piece, answers emerge. Gunn's best in years - quite possibly his best ever. " - Kirkus
"Perhaps inevitably, the conclusion is anticlimactic, making the novel feel like the first installment of a much longer story." - Publishers Weekly
"[Gunn] has conceived a tale that addresses the universal longing for 'something more' yet never sacrifices grandness of scale to the goals of individual characters. The author's fans and lovers of science-based sf and alien races should flock to this adventure." - Library Journal
"Jim Gunn doesn't publish a new novel very often, but when he does it's a whopper. Transcendental is his best yet, and in it he demonstrates his possession of one of the most finely developed skills at world-building (and at aliens-creating to populate those worlds) in science fiction today. Read it!" - Frederik Pohl, bestselling author of Gateway
"James Gunn, after a long, stellar career in science fiction, is a master of the narrative art - as he shows in this Chaucerian pilgrimage through the galactic future." - Robert Silverberg, bestselling author of Lord Valentine's Castle
This information about Transcendental was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
James Gunn is the Hugo Award-winning science fiction author of The Joy Makers, The Immortals, and The Listeners, and the coauthor, with Jack Williamson, of the classic epic SF novel Star Bridge.
He lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
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