The Phoenix Exultant (Golden Age, Book 2) – John C. Wright

Title: The Phoenix Exultant

Author: John C. Wright

Series: The Golden Age, Book 2

Genre: Science Fiction

First off, if you haven’t read Wright’s The Golden Age, just buy it. You could read Phoenix Exultant without having read it, but you would just be cutting yourself short on one of the most creative, visionary, and exciting science fiction trilogies.

Phoenix starts out right exactly where Golden Age stops. And pretty much just keeps plowing ahead. That may have sounded a little monotonous, but let me assure you Wright’s epic is anything but. The most amazing aspect of Wright’s writing, in my mind, is how he can cultivate a conflict and conspiracy, an enemy and allies that continue to evolve throughout this book and into the next one.

This book, to me, was one adventure right after the next with hardly any downtime in between. It’s pretty much nonstop from start to finish. Mixing the movement of the plot with the action, you also have the zany but strangely familiar world Wright has created. What is so beautiful about this book, about the entire trilogy, is that the true conflict of the story lies in the impact of the technology of this future on mankind. That is the essential nature of science fiction.

So do I recommend it? Absolutely, especially if you like science fiction – but I highly recommend reading The Golden Age first, and I’d even recommend trying to have Golden Transcendence on hand as well. That way you don’t have to wait at all to continue the story.

Worldview: Secular

Recommended Age: Should be appropriate for high school age children, and some older middleschoolers – mainly as long as they can handle a few mature themes and the really abstract concepts (and crazy vocabulary!)

Additional links:
John C. Wright’s blog
A specific blog entry explaining his conversion to christianity (though it seems more to be Catholicism than Christianity to me)
The Phoenix Exultant on Google Books