From Booklist
The members of the Families were cloned from carefully selected individuals and given godlike powers to keep the peace. They have served well enough, and then Alice, one of the oldest Chamberlains, returns with news of a pocket universe in the galactic core that will destroy a vast swathe of the highly populated central galaxy. Ord, the Baby Chamberlain, is charged with finding explanations and possible solutions. In an almost incomprehensible timescale, he fights forces set on toppling the Families for their hubris and travels to the galactic core, picking up attributes Alice left for him along the way. In a perfectly timed, unexpected denouement, Ord flees through a wormhole to tell the elders what will happen when they open the baby universe, followed by his two oldest friends and most implacable enemies. The people of Reed's imaginative future are strange because they live for so long and play such bizarre games with reality, yet they are^B ultimately recognizable as fellows to mere humans, such as present-day readers.
Regina SchroederCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
illions of years from now mankind has been saved from self-destruction by the creation of a super-race that could create a future safe for huma-kind and the rest of the galaxy. There is peace for tens of millions of years, but then Sister Alice, a member of this super race and a fabled expert at creating habitable worlds, is part of an experiment that destroys countless worlds. Alice is punished, but one of her descendants, Ord, is allowed to discover what she did, and to try to heal what she destroyed. Ord's odyssey in space and time is one of the most memorable stories ever told in science fiction.
