Coalescent

Its place in Destiny's Children

Coalescent is book 1 in the Destiny's Children series. It is followed by Exultant. See the full Destiny's Children reading order.

Set within Stephen Baxter's wider Xeelee Sequence universe, the Destiny's Children quartet is a more tightly connected story than the core Xeelee novels, tracing a single bloodline across an immense span of future history. Coalescent (2003) splits between a present-day Manchester storyline and the secret history of a hidden, hive-like religious sisterhood founded in the twilight of Roman Britain -- a society that has been quietly manipulating human evolution toward eusociality for fifteen centuries. Exultant…