"In his big and ambitious new novel, The Wreck of The River of Stars, Michael Flynn displays a boundless faith in the heritage and protocols of the genre. His specific model here is early Heinlein: the master's lively, slangy, bustling tales of working stiffs in space have often been imitated, but rarely as eloquently as this. Like John Varley and Allen Steele, Flynn is expert at the Heinleinian voice and method . . . The perfect ingredients are in place for a claustrophobic, character-driven nautical tale . . . Such a tale Flynn delivers with a vengeance, full of intrigue, poetry, and thunder . . . an opulent tapestry of human observation. . . . go and read this large, insinuating, emotionally labyrinthine book."--Locus
"The Wreck of The River of Stars is thrilling in its rigorously imagined, meticulously textured language and traditions -- one gets the sense that Flynn has actually served on one of these ships, as Herman Melville once crisscrossed the Pacific on a brig in search of whales. . . . a narrative machine whose denouement exerts a great power over the reader. . . . triumph and tragedy merge into an ultimately satisfying whole. . . . The Wreck of The River of Stars emerges finally as a lovely tale. . . . told with integrity and intelligence."-Strangehorizons.com
"The Wreck of the River of Stars is a tour de force of character development. We watch, riveted, as these motley misfits squabble, beef and try to cope, in the hermetic isolation of a ship becalmed in space . . . The Wreck of the River of Stars is a classical tragedy. . . . Flynn's writing is masterful. His pacing is grave, controlled, ironic. His characters will break your heart as they work, love, fight, grow, grieve and die. This is a wonderful book, easily Flynn's best. . . . This is the best hard SF tragic novel of character yet written . . . Highly recommended."-Sfsite.com
"Flynn moves to a higher orbit with this one. . . . Flynn's writing style has matured over the years, and The Wreck of River of Stars has a fluidity that sets it apart from his earlier works. . . . he effortlessly shifts points of view throughout the narrative, building an unusual rapport between the reader and each of his 16 characters. I cheered their triumphs and mourned their defeats even as I came to see how both were the inescapable consequences of their own choices. If there ever was a character-driven "Hard" SF adventure story, this is it."-SFRevu.com
"This is science fiction at its best as the audience sees the impact of a radical change in technology on people and industries as has happened throughout history especially the twentieth century (horse driven coaches to cars, etc.). The story line conveys a deep a powerful look at varying technological changes on a crew without slowing down the plot. On top of an action-packed yet cerebral thriller, the cast is fully developed so readers understand the crisis and how everyone will react to it. Flynn has written a winner."-Midwest Book Review
"In addition to a page-turning story of the last solar sailing ship . . . Michael Flynn has created a strong emotional landscape of developed characters."-The Olympian (Olympia, WA)
"The accomplished Flynn (In the Country of the Blind) offers more character analysis than action and adventure in this stand-alone novel, which fans of more cerebral SF will find thoroughly absorbing. . . . Flynn layers the personalities and disasters in this complicated story with his usual attention to detail. . . . This is a sad but compelling study of (literally) explosive group dynamics in an arena where technology is critical to human life."-Publishers Weekly
"Flynn's Firestar series proved that he could develop a far-future, spacefaring universe packed with action, and this novel proves it some more. Planting a foot in two other fictional universes, that of Patrick O'Brian's historical novels of the British navy and that of Robert A. Heinlein (an Annapolis graduate, let us recall) in his astronautical fiction, this is good, challenging reading."--Booklist
"Flynn's fully realized characters, easy mastery of technical detail, and meticulous, consequential style perfectly matches the theme of this long, dense, spellbinding, brilliant work."-Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
"Flynn's narrative style combines space opera and high-tech SF to create a memorable tale of people trapped by circumstances and destiny."-Library Journal
"A slowly unfolding tale of tragedy and loss. With rigorous attention to matters nautical, celestial and human, Flynn mourns the passing of a golden age we've yet to live."
-Wil McCarthy
"An enjoyable, well-crafted work of hard speculative fiction, 0The Wreck of The River Of Stars captures both the reality and the romance of spaceflight. Here is hardship, danger, the vast emptiness of space, the comedy and tragedy and strangeness of the merely human beings who challenge it. Mike Flynn's characters have the virtues, vices, flaws and fine qualities an insightful author can see in the human soul. The science is either real or it is realistic. His writing is simply among the finest available today. . . . It lives up to the forgotten standard of what hard-SF is supposed to be: authentic yet unforgettably odd characters in a realistic near-future extrapolation, the fantastic made to seem possible." - John C. Wright
"A powerhouse. If there's a novel not to be missed this year, this is it."-Jack McDevitt
