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Tao Solandis
The stars are dead. Time exhales its final breath. In a forgotten archive, the last story begins…
At the edge of time, after the last stars have flickered out, and the universe drifts into silence, Tao Solandis endures... a space station orbiting a dying black hole.
Within its halls, an ancient AI safeguards the artifacts and memories of countless lost civilizations, waiting for the foretold arrival of a traveller who has stepped across eons and dimensional planes, searching for his lost love.
Tao Solandis unveils six interconnected tales:
Zero Sum Sunrise - A rogue agent sets out to uncover the apocalyptic schemes of a godlike AI.
The Shard of Theia - A celestial fragment reveals humanity's cosmic origins.
Dirge of the Sha'i-song Bird - An alien battles soul-stealing biotechnology to save his beloved.
Counterfeit Sky - In a fractured reality, truth and illusion blur beyond recognition.
Pilgrims of the Eventide Star - A dying star brings together pilgrims seeking meaning.
As the universe fades, these tales weave a meditation on love, survival, and the fragile beauty of life, even at the end of time itself.
At the edge of time, after the last stars have flickered out, and the universe drifts into silence, Tao Solandis endures... a space station orbiting a dying black hole.
Within its halls, an ancient AI safeguards the artifacts and memories of countless lost civilizations, waiting for the foretold arrival of a traveller who has stepped across eons and dimensional planes, searching for his lost love.
Tao Solandis unveils six interconnected tales:
Zero Sum Sunrise - A rogue agent sets out to uncover the apocalyptic schemes of a godlike AI.
The Shard of Theia - A celestial fragment reveals humanity's cosmic origins.
Dirge of the Sha'i-song Bird - An alien battles soul-stealing biotechnology to save his beloved.
Counterfeit Sky - In a fractured reality, truth and illusion blur beyond recognition.
Pilgrims of the Eventide Star - A dying star brings together pilgrims seeking meaning.
As the universe fades, these tales weave a meditation on love, survival, and the fragile beauty of life, even at the end of time itself.
363 pages, Paperback
Published September 16, 2025
21 people are currently reading
212 people want to read
About the author
Darrel William Moore
3 books718 followersI've loved both books and science fiction from an early age so for me it was inevitable I began writing. My influences include Philip K Dick, Dan Simmons, Arthur C Clarke, Ursula Le Guin, Frank Herbert and so many more - storytellers and world-builders. But other, more unconventional sources inspire my writing too, such as anime, music and cult TV shows like the BBC classic Blake’s 7 and the iconic Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I enjoy creating complex characters and then putting them through it - I don't believe in characters getting an easy time. My first novel, Black Milk, was released in 2016 and I published my second, Delphine Descends, in 2019. I'm currently working on my next.
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June 21, 2025I guess I can say I read this since I wrote it 🤣
September 17, 2025
Some stories saddened me to see end and others simply weren’t for me. No fault of the author’s, there are just some genres I don’t indulge in. He covers a wide spectrum of sci-fi/fantasy flavors so if you celebrate them all, you’ll definitely enjoy it. Writing that’s explores heady ideas while also being easy to read. Eager to check out more of their work.
Also if you’re ever looking for recommendations, the author has a great YouTube channel devoted to all things sci-fi. Some of my favorite reads of 2025 were at his suggestion. Check out their book. Like. Subscribe. Follow.
Also if you’re ever looking for recommendations, the author has a great YouTube channel devoted to all things sci-fi. Some of my favorite reads of 2025 were at his suggestion. Check out their book. Like. Subscribe. Follow.
November 23, 2025
Five short stories tied together with an overarching narrative. There are some good ideas in here but the execution is very uneven and off-putting.
Where to start. I guess with the editing. This feels like a self-published book, maybe it is, because every couple pages you come across an error that stick out like a sore thumb, something an editor should catch. The wrong synonym used, etc. Not the kind of thing a quick scan with a spell checker would find. It feels not so much like a first draft, but a second draft that needs a good scrub. Some examples:
[A crewman is given an order]
"I, captain," Dupont responded at once.
"Her smile and the amiable softness of her eyes, however, never faulter"
"Carter," I say, somewhat horse.
These should clearly be "Aye", "falter", "hoarse". Combine this with a few words used incorrectly and a tendency towards repetition, with the same phrases used word for word on numerous occasions, and it feels like you're reading a weblog and not a real published novel sometimes.
And yet the writing is good on occasion. Despite some word choices that definitely feel like they are trying too hard (lots of characters trying real hard to sound smart), the author imparts some intelligence into his writing that elevates the experience even while the mistakes try and drag it down. This is not a poorly-written novel, from a prose perspective. But then you'll come across a sentence like this and smack your forehead: "Commander Hiroshi, a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency veteran with experience in space exploration, believe humanity should prepare itself for a new era of space exploration."
On to the subject matter. While the five short stories here are tied loosely together with six little snippets of an AI receiving a visitor aboard a space station, that part of the novel falls kind of flat and drags at times. Each short story is told with a slightly different style and subject matter, and as I discuss each in turn below you will see that there is a clear pattern here. While there is some mostly hard science in these stories, a lot of the time logic and science is ejected and hand-waved with nanotechnology, nano viruses, and a mystical material called Computronium that turns everything into nanotechnology I guess. This results in a very uneven read, with some good build up and interesting concepts sometimes just turning into nano this or quantum that right when you think it is going to pay off. Not always, but enough times that it's hard to maintain that suspension of disbelief. Okay on to the individual stories.
The first is probably the worst, the bulk of it is framed as an interrogation between a female officer in a law enforcement or military position and a recently-captured scoundrel. There are a couple big problems with this one, the first being the massive amounts of exposition necessary to set up the conflict, which becomes tedious pretty fast and hard to keep straight because it's just too much work for the reader for a short story. The author tries to fit a full novel's worth of backstory into about 60 pages and it just doesn't work. The second problem is that it seems to have been written as a third person narrative (maybe?) and then converted into the interview format afterwards. And so we get one of my pet peeves front and center: characters talking out loud in extremely unnatural ways in the literary style of a book. Listen to these sentences, which are supposedly coming out of the mouth of a captured rebel operative as he is being questioned by the police:
"Mayzee punched commands into her console, her fingers flying over the holographic keys. Then, interjecting, she suggested the signal's structure was too ordered to be natural."
"At once a cacophony of charged particle beams and the primal roar of combustion firearms filled the air."
"The world was a silent sentinel in the void, its surface a seamless, iridescent sheet of ice reflecting the faint glow of distant stars."
The thing is, these sentences would not give me pause if they were just part of the story, descriptions of things happening. They aren't bad at all, really. The problem is that NOBODY talks like this and to present 40-50 pages of a character telling us a long and detailed story, half in a realistic conversational tone (or at least close enough) and half in this literary tone, is jarring and weird.
Anyway, the story is about this captured rebel who is too cool for school unraveling a dastardly plot enacted by rogue AI, while his female captor who was previously unshakeable in her faith in her abilities and the righteousness of her government's cause (surprise surprise) starting to have doubts as he gets under her skin. We've seen this all before. One star.
In the second short story humans of a few decades from now at most discover an ancient alien artifact that leads them on a trip to the edge of our solar system and beyond. More on this below, but this one is probably the least interesting of the stories as it is a little dull, full of dull characters, and is surprisingly predictable. Two stars.
The third one is probably my favorite of the five which is a little surprising. In this one we have some humanoid aliens who can communicate mind to mind by sticking their fingers into the back of each other's necks, living in a primitive society where huge monsters come crashing out of the jungle and everything seems alive. And then an obviously technological threat appears and wipes out entire villages and we are left with a broken and desperate main character fighting for survival. I liked this one! And I often find these primitive society tales frustrating. I was reminded at times here of Gene Wolfe -- not the regular mainline stories in his sci fi books, but the single-chapter interludes where he apes Kipling or some Native American mythos to tell a psychedelic tale on an alien world. But where Wolfe likes to obfuscate things and leave you wondering what in the world is even happening, here we get a pretty straightforward narrative with just a few oddball elements, and a chaotic but easy to follow story. Four stars.
Number four is a dystopian nightmare where everybody is not just staring at their phones all day long, but is living in their own worlds with full virtual reality layered over their sensations of the real world. One wonders why they go outside, but they do, and they get into trouble. Viruses (not the nano kind this time, thankfully) are a big problem and we get a hard-boiled detective story as our hero cop fights insanity. While this one dragged a bit at times there is a fantastic section where the main character battles viruses and the infected, easily the best part of the book. Unfortunately the rest of this one drags it down and I stopped paying close attention and I may have lost the plot towards the end to appreciate the way the story wrapped up. I will probably go back and read this one again sometime. Four stars.
The final short story has five aliens (one being a human) telling their tales as payment of sorts for their passage on a spaceship going to visit a super-intelligent, almost godlike AI. This one had some great concepts but I really didn't care one bit about a few of these characters. There is a saucy and arrogant alien poet. A swarm of dust-mote-sized animals that form a colony mind, which has somehow evolved from a bipedal humanoid race (I have no idea how this would work). Some others, I forget. And a human female, who is very boring. Sorry, this one didn't grab me at all, and it was supposed to be the unifying story that brought everything together just in time for the final AI space station reveal at the end. Which fell completely flat as a result. Two stars.
You may have noticed a pattern here. We have:
1. Shadow war between hyper intelligent AIs in a multi-planet space opera.
2. Discovery of an alien artifact, instructions for first contact, and ensuing mission of early space-faring humans.
3. Primitive tribal culture on an exotic planet with large and dangerous wildlife is invaded by high tech baddies.
4. Near-future humanity trapped in virtual reality where identity is in question.
5. Five pilgrims tell their tales on a space voyage to a quasi-religious encounter.
Or in other words:
1. Culture / Hyperion
2. 2001 / Contact
3. Avatar
4. Matrix / Total Recall
5. Hyperion (again)
Each of these short stories doesn't just get inspiration from its source material, it wears its influences on its sleeve and you might even say is a homage of sorts. A few of them transcend their source material and have occasional flashes of something more than just knock-offs of more established works, but it is really hard to take after a while. I am not sure the author's intention but I will assume that this was intentional and that these obvious influences are on purpose and we are supposed to appreciate the retelling of these famous stories AS retellings of famous stories. This just didn't work for me at all. And so even though if you averaged my star ratings for the individual short stories you would get something like a low three star rating, I am afraid as a whole the novel just didn't gel for me. And so, two stars.
Where to start. I guess with the editing. This feels like a self-published book, maybe it is, because every couple pages you come across an error that stick out like a sore thumb, something an editor should catch. The wrong synonym used, etc. Not the kind of thing a quick scan with a spell checker would find. It feels not so much like a first draft, but a second draft that needs a good scrub. Some examples:
[A crewman is given an order]
"I, captain," Dupont responded at once.
"Her smile and the amiable softness of her eyes, however, never faulter"
"Carter," I say, somewhat horse.
These should clearly be "Aye", "falter", "hoarse". Combine this with a few words used incorrectly and a tendency towards repetition, with the same phrases used word for word on numerous occasions, and it feels like you're reading a weblog and not a real published novel sometimes.
And yet the writing is good on occasion. Despite some word choices that definitely feel like they are trying too hard (lots of characters trying real hard to sound smart), the author imparts some intelligence into his writing that elevates the experience even while the mistakes try and drag it down. This is not a poorly-written novel, from a prose perspective. But then you'll come across a sentence like this and smack your forehead: "Commander Hiroshi, a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency veteran with experience in space exploration, believe humanity should prepare itself for a new era of space exploration."
On to the subject matter. While the five short stories here are tied loosely together with six little snippets of an AI receiving a visitor aboard a space station, that part of the novel falls kind of flat and drags at times. Each short story is told with a slightly different style and subject matter, and as I discuss each in turn below you will see that there is a clear pattern here. While there is some mostly hard science in these stories, a lot of the time logic and science is ejected and hand-waved with nanotechnology, nano viruses, and a mystical material called Computronium that turns everything into nanotechnology I guess. This results in a very uneven read, with some good build up and interesting concepts sometimes just turning into nano this or quantum that right when you think it is going to pay off. Not always, but enough times that it's hard to maintain that suspension of disbelief. Okay on to the individual stories.
The first is probably the worst, the bulk of it is framed as an interrogation between a female officer in a law enforcement or military position and a recently-captured scoundrel. There are a couple big problems with this one, the first being the massive amounts of exposition necessary to set up the conflict, which becomes tedious pretty fast and hard to keep straight because it's just too much work for the reader for a short story. The author tries to fit a full novel's worth of backstory into about 60 pages and it just doesn't work. The second problem is that it seems to have been written as a third person narrative (maybe?) and then converted into the interview format afterwards. And so we get one of my pet peeves front and center: characters talking out loud in extremely unnatural ways in the literary style of a book. Listen to these sentences, which are supposedly coming out of the mouth of a captured rebel operative as he is being questioned by the police:
"Mayzee punched commands into her console, her fingers flying over the holographic keys. Then, interjecting, she suggested the signal's structure was too ordered to be natural."
"At once a cacophony of charged particle beams and the primal roar of combustion firearms filled the air."
"The world was a silent sentinel in the void, its surface a seamless, iridescent sheet of ice reflecting the faint glow of distant stars."
The thing is, these sentences would not give me pause if they were just part of the story, descriptions of things happening. They aren't bad at all, really. The problem is that NOBODY talks like this and to present 40-50 pages of a character telling us a long and detailed story, half in a realistic conversational tone (or at least close enough) and half in this literary tone, is jarring and weird.
Anyway, the story is about this captured rebel who is too cool for school unraveling a dastardly plot enacted by rogue AI, while his female captor who was previously unshakeable in her faith in her abilities and the righteousness of her government's cause (surprise surprise) starting to have doubts as he gets under her skin. We've seen this all before. One star.
In the second short story humans of a few decades from now at most discover an ancient alien artifact that leads them on a trip to the edge of our solar system and beyond. More on this below, but this one is probably the least interesting of the stories as it is a little dull, full of dull characters, and is surprisingly predictable. Two stars.
The third one is probably my favorite of the five which is a little surprising. In this one we have some humanoid aliens who can communicate mind to mind by sticking their fingers into the back of each other's necks, living in a primitive society where huge monsters come crashing out of the jungle and everything seems alive. And then an obviously technological threat appears and wipes out entire villages and we are left with a broken and desperate main character fighting for survival. I liked this one! And I often find these primitive society tales frustrating. I was reminded at times here of Gene Wolfe -- not the regular mainline stories in his sci fi books, but the single-chapter interludes where he apes Kipling or some Native American mythos to tell a psychedelic tale on an alien world. But where Wolfe likes to obfuscate things and leave you wondering what in the world is even happening, here we get a pretty straightforward narrative with just a few oddball elements, and a chaotic but easy to follow story. Four stars.
Number four is a dystopian nightmare where everybody is not just staring at their phones all day long, but is living in their own worlds with full virtual reality layered over their sensations of the real world. One wonders why they go outside, but they do, and they get into trouble. Viruses (not the nano kind this time, thankfully) are a big problem and we get a hard-boiled detective story as our hero cop fights insanity. While this one dragged a bit at times there is a fantastic section where the main character battles viruses and the infected, easily the best part of the book. Unfortunately the rest of this one drags it down and I stopped paying close attention and I may have lost the plot towards the end to appreciate the way the story wrapped up. I will probably go back and read this one again sometime. Four stars.
The final short story has five aliens (one being a human) telling their tales as payment of sorts for their passage on a spaceship going to visit a super-intelligent, almost godlike AI. This one had some great concepts but I really didn't care one bit about a few of these characters. There is a saucy and arrogant alien poet. A swarm of dust-mote-sized animals that form a colony mind, which has somehow evolved from a bipedal humanoid race (I have no idea how this would work). Some others, I forget. And a human female, who is very boring. Sorry, this one didn't grab me at all, and it was supposed to be the unifying story that brought everything together just in time for the final AI space station reveal at the end. Which fell completely flat as a result. Two stars.
You may have noticed a pattern here. We have:
1. Shadow war between hyper intelligent AIs in a multi-planet space opera.
2. Discovery of an alien artifact, instructions for first contact, and ensuing mission of early space-faring humans.
3. Primitive tribal culture on an exotic planet with large and dangerous wildlife is invaded by high tech baddies.
4. Near-future humanity trapped in virtual reality where identity is in question.
5. Five pilgrims tell their tales on a space voyage to a quasi-religious encounter.
Or in other words:
1. Culture / Hyperion
2. 2001 / Contact
3. Avatar
4. Matrix / Total Recall
5. Hyperion (again)
Each of these short stories doesn't just get inspiration from its source material, it wears its influences on its sleeve and you might even say is a homage of sorts. A few of them transcend their source material and have occasional flashes of something more than just knock-offs of more established works, but it is really hard to take after a while. I am not sure the author's intention but I will assume that this was intentional and that these obvious influences are on purpose and we are supposed to appreciate the retelling of these famous stories AS retellings of famous stories. This just didn't work for me at all. And so even though if you averaged my star ratings for the individual short stories you would get something like a low three star rating, I am afraid as a whole the novel just didn't gel for me. And so, two stars.
June 18, 2025
Wow!! What a good book! This is my first read by this author. I was given a free copy of the ebook for my honest unbiased review.
Tao Solandis is a space station orbiting a black hole at the end of the universe. This station is run by an AI entity at near the end of time. It contains artifacts and information of countless civilizations. Over the course of the book, the story is told by six seemingly disparate stories; but gradually revealed to be interrelated. Each story is original, unique, and utterly compelling. In fact, chapter 6, entitled "Dirge of the Sha'i Song Bird" is probably the best chapter in science fiction I have read in quite some time.
Over the course of the book, I enjoyed flavors of space opera, cyberpunk, planetary romance, hard science fiction, first contact, artificial intelligence, and more. And all these flavors mixed seamlessly together to make a truly 5 star read.
The author, Darrel Moore has a youtube channel entitled Sci-Fi Odyssey. I am familiar with his channel and find it to be polished and Darrel to be well-spoken. Therefore, it should have come as no surprise that the novel, "Tao Solandis" is equally polished and well-written.
Thanks to my enjoyment of this novel, I will be picking up this author's other offerings.
Tao Solandis is a space station orbiting a black hole at the end of the universe. This station is run by an AI entity at near the end of time. It contains artifacts and information of countless civilizations. Over the course of the book, the story is told by six seemingly disparate stories; but gradually revealed to be interrelated. Each story is original, unique, and utterly compelling. In fact, chapter 6, entitled "Dirge of the Sha'i Song Bird" is probably the best chapter in science fiction I have read in quite some time.
Over the course of the book, I enjoyed flavors of space opera, cyberpunk, planetary romance, hard science fiction, first contact, artificial intelligence, and more. And all these flavors mixed seamlessly together to make a truly 5 star read.
The author, Darrel Moore has a youtube channel entitled Sci-Fi Odyssey. I am familiar with his channel and find it to be polished and Darrel to be well-spoken. Therefore, it should have come as no surprise that the novel, "Tao Solandis" is equally polished and well-written.
Thanks to my enjoyment of this novel, I will be picking up this author's other offerings.
July 9, 2025
I‘ve been subscribed to the author’s YouTube page for some time now and I’ve always found it to be a great page for in-depth examinations, from a philosophical perspective, of sci-fi works. Loving the quality that goes into each video, once I saw Darrel had a book releasing I knew I had to grab it.
I wasn’t sure what to expect plot wise, but I absolutely love the idea of technology and races in the universe that escape our understanding of what it means to be alive. The book is in a short-story / interlude alternating format where each interlude brings us back to the overarching story-line. I love how so many of the stories feel original yet have clear inspirations from some of the great sci-fi novels / films.
“The Shard of Theia” was my personal favorite, with influence from 2001 A Space Oddysey. I appreciate how each short story felt like it could’ve been expanded into a full novel and I would read almost all of them.
“Dirge of the Sha’i-song Bird” was the weakest story to me, but that may be from my inability to fully grasp the story through the pages and I’m sure others will understand more than I did. Regardless, I will always appreciate smaller independent authors for putting in the time and effort to original sci-fi stories and can’t wait to see what comes in the future.
I wasn’t sure what to expect plot wise, but I absolutely love the idea of technology and races in the universe that escape our understanding of what it means to be alive. The book is in a short-story / interlude alternating format where each interlude brings us back to the overarching story-line. I love how so many of the stories feel original yet have clear inspirations from some of the great sci-fi novels / films.
“The Shard of Theia” was my personal favorite, with influence from 2001 A Space Oddysey. I appreciate how each short story felt like it could’ve been expanded into a full novel and I would read almost all of them.
“Dirge of the Sha’i-song Bird” was the weakest story to me, but that may be from my inability to fully grasp the story through the pages and I’m sure others will understand more than I did. Regardless, I will always appreciate smaller independent authors for putting in the time and effort to original sci-fi stories and can’t wait to see what comes in the future.
September 18, 2025
English Version
Disclaimer: I received a free pre-publication copy from the author in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive any payment or compensation for this review.
TL;DR:: An amazing book composed of five original stories, seamlessly woven together into a harmonious whole. Highly recommended for Sci-Fi fans!
Deep review::
Tao Solandis: is a cohesive set of short stories that coalesce into a beautiful whole. We follow the journey of a being visiting a space station filled with countless artifacts at the very edge of space and time. Through its wanderings and encounters with these meaningful relics, the stories unfold.
Each tale is rich, original, and well orchestrated. I especially enjoyed the eclectic mix—from Space Opera to Anticipation, Cyberpunk-like narratives, and even touches of Science Fantasy. This variety feels refreshing and keeps the book dazzling from beginning to end. Naturally, some stories may resonate more than others depending on personal taste, but all of them were truly captivating.
Even though each story is independent and can span millennia—or even billions of years—there are always subtle elements that connect one to another. These threads enrich the book as a whole and make it feel like a single, unified piece. I loved these interconnections between the stories.
I also appreciated the author’s writing style, which carries a touch of classic Sci-Fi. At times, I did find the prose a little too dense in certain sentences, particularly in the short interludes that link the stories, but this was only a minor drawback.
Overall, Tao Solandis was a wonderful discovery, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to all science fiction fans. As I read, I often thought it would be the perfect beginning to multiple series of books, and I truly hope that one day I’ll be able to dive back into this world.
*******************************
Version Française
Avertissement : J’ai reçu un exemplaire de pré-publication gratuit de l’auteur en échange d’une critique honnête. Je n’ai reçu aucun paiement ni compensation pour cette critique.
En résumé : Un livre remarquable, composé de cinq histoires originales, habilement entremêlées en un ensemble harmonieux. Je recommande chaudement aux amateurs de science-fiction !
Critique détaillée :
Tao Solandis: est un recueil cohérent de nouvelles qui s’unissent pour former un tout très convaincant. Nous suivons le voyage d’un être qui explore une station spatiale remplie d’innombrables artefacts aux confins de l’espace et du temps. Au fil de ses errances et de ses rencontres avec ces reliques chargées de sens, les histoires se dévoilent.
Chacune de ces histoires est riche, originale et parfaitement orchestrée. J’ai particulièrement apprécié l’éclectisme de l’ensemble : du Space-Opera à l’Anticipation, en passant par des récits aux accents cyberpunk et même de la Science-Fantasy. Cette diversité est rafraîchissante et rend le livre éblouissant du début à la fin. Bien sûr, certaines histoires résonneront davantage selon les goûts de chacun, mais toutes m’ont paru captivantes.
Même si chaque histoire est indépendante et peut s’étendre sur des millénaires—voire des milliards d’années—il y a toujours de subtils éléments qui les relient les unes aux autres. Ces fils conducteurs enrichissent l’ensemble et donnent au livre une vraie unité. J’ai adoré ces interconnexions entre les récits.
J’ai également beaucoup apprécié le style de l’auteur, qui rappelle par moments la grande tradition de la science-fiction classique. Parfois, j’ai trouvé la prose un peu trop dense dans certaines phrases, notamment dans les courts interludes qui relient les histoires, mais cela reste un détail mineur.
Dans l’ensemble, Tao Solandis a été une très belle découverte que je recommande chaleureusement à tous les passionnés de science-fiction. En le lisant, je me suis souvent dit qu’il ferait un excellent point de départ pour de multiples séries de livres, et j’espère vraiment qu’un jour je pourrai replonger dans cet univers.
Disclaimer: I received a free pre-publication copy from the author in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive any payment or compensation for this review.
TL;DR:: An amazing book composed of five original stories, seamlessly woven together into a harmonious whole. Highly recommended for Sci-Fi fans!
Deep review::
Tao Solandis: is a cohesive set of short stories that coalesce into a beautiful whole. We follow the journey of a being visiting a space station filled with countless artifacts at the very edge of space and time. Through its wanderings and encounters with these meaningful relics, the stories unfold.
Each tale is rich, original, and well orchestrated. I especially enjoyed the eclectic mix—from Space Opera to Anticipation, Cyberpunk-like narratives, and even touches of Science Fantasy. This variety feels refreshing and keeps the book dazzling from beginning to end. Naturally, some stories may resonate more than others depending on personal taste, but all of them were truly captivating.
Even though each story is independent and can span millennia—or even billions of years—there are always subtle elements that connect one to another. These threads enrich the book as a whole and make it feel like a single, unified piece. I loved these interconnections between the stories.
I also appreciated the author’s writing style, which carries a touch of classic Sci-Fi. At times, I did find the prose a little too dense in certain sentences, particularly in the short interludes that link the stories, but this was only a minor drawback.
Overall, Tao Solandis was a wonderful discovery, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to all science fiction fans. As I read, I often thought it would be the perfect beginning to multiple series of books, and I truly hope that one day I’ll be able to dive back into this world.
*******************************
Version Française
Avertissement : J’ai reçu un exemplaire de pré-publication gratuit de l’auteur en échange d’une critique honnête. Je n’ai reçu aucun paiement ni compensation pour cette critique.
En résumé : Un livre remarquable, composé de cinq histoires originales, habilement entremêlées en un ensemble harmonieux. Je recommande chaudement aux amateurs de science-fiction !
Critique détaillée :
Tao Solandis: est un recueil cohérent de nouvelles qui s’unissent pour former un tout très convaincant. Nous suivons le voyage d’un être qui explore une station spatiale remplie d’innombrables artefacts aux confins de l’espace et du temps. Au fil de ses errances et de ses rencontres avec ces reliques chargées de sens, les histoires se dévoilent.
Chacune de ces histoires est riche, originale et parfaitement orchestrée. J’ai particulièrement apprécié l’éclectisme de l’ensemble : du Space-Opera à l’Anticipation, en passant par des récits aux accents cyberpunk et même de la Science-Fantasy. Cette diversité est rafraîchissante et rend le livre éblouissant du début à la fin. Bien sûr, certaines histoires résonneront davantage selon les goûts de chacun, mais toutes m’ont paru captivantes.
Même si chaque histoire est indépendante et peut s’étendre sur des millénaires—voire des milliards d’années—il y a toujours de subtils éléments qui les relient les unes aux autres. Ces fils conducteurs enrichissent l’ensemble et donnent au livre une vraie unité. J’ai adoré ces interconnexions entre les récits.
J’ai également beaucoup apprécié le style de l’auteur, qui rappelle par moments la grande tradition de la science-fiction classique. Parfois, j’ai trouvé la prose un peu trop dense dans certaines phrases, notamment dans les courts interludes qui relient les histoires, mais cela reste un détail mineur.
Dans l’ensemble, Tao Solandis a été une très belle découverte que je recommande chaleureusement à tous les passionnés de science-fiction. En le lisant, je me suis souvent dit qu’il ferait un excellent point de départ pour de multiples séries de livres, et j’espère vraiment qu’un jour je pourrai replonger dans cet univers.
June 23, 2025
Disclaimer: I received a pre-publication free copy and received neither payment nor compensation for this review.
This amazing novel will leave you with a lot of questions and, if you’re lucky, a few answers. That’s what happened to me. The author takes us into a multi-dimensional world, playing with time, space, speed and people.
We learn that Tao Solandis is an archive, orbiting a dying black hole much like a space station. There is an old AI, waiting for a guest, who arrives after over one hundred billion years. We follow a love story. We move in and out of different worlds.
We discover the Dires, living algorithms transcended from AI, and the Gnoscape, where they live and simulate futures, seeing the outcomes of decisions before they’re made in real-time. We join The Wanderer – a cosmic traveler, and we discover the Vailons, a people for whom stories are a vital resource.
From dark to dark. The book starts with a dark Zero Sum Sunrise and moves around a figurative circle, finishing with the Pilgrims of a Eventide Star, in a fading twilight.
We wonder what will come after the fading black holes and Dark Era bring entropy to the world we know? Tao Solandis poses big questions:
• What will the world be like after the Dark Era?
• Are there multitudes of worlds beyond what we know and that we may or may not be able to discover?
• What lies ahead if we can develop technologies to let us travel into the future at speeds unknown today?
• Above all, how much control do we have over our actions and our destinies
It’s a deep story with interconnected worlds, characters and events. I suggest you read it slowly, absorbing each time and place you are in, but reading a little every day to stay in the flow. It’s the kind of novel you will not forget.
Jane McConnell, Imaginize.World
This amazing novel will leave you with a lot of questions and, if you’re lucky, a few answers. That’s what happened to me. The author takes us into a multi-dimensional world, playing with time, space, speed and people.
We learn that Tao Solandis is an archive, orbiting a dying black hole much like a space station. There is an old AI, waiting for a guest, who arrives after over one hundred billion years. We follow a love story. We move in and out of different worlds.
We discover the Dires, living algorithms transcended from AI, and the Gnoscape, where they live and simulate futures, seeing the outcomes of decisions before they’re made in real-time. We join The Wanderer – a cosmic traveler, and we discover the Vailons, a people for whom stories are a vital resource.
From dark to dark. The book starts with a dark Zero Sum Sunrise and moves around a figurative circle, finishing with the Pilgrims of a Eventide Star, in a fading twilight.
We wonder what will come after the fading black holes and Dark Era bring entropy to the world we know? Tao Solandis poses big questions:
• What will the world be like after the Dark Era?
• Are there multitudes of worlds beyond what we know and that we may or may not be able to discover?
• What lies ahead if we can develop technologies to let us travel into the future at speeds unknown today?
• Above all, how much control do we have over our actions and our destinies
It’s a deep story with interconnected worlds, characters and events. I suggest you read it slowly, absorbing each time and place you are in, but reading a little every day to stay in the flow. It’s the kind of novel you will not forget.
Jane McConnell, Imaginize.World
July 13, 2025
TAO SOLANDIS is written in the style of classic science fiction. The world building is immersive as we explore multiple cultures on different planets in a connected universe. The Archive on Tao Solandis is a fantastic character and I loved its narrative chapters. In between those chapters are stories that are both independent and connected. Some have seemingly slight relevance to the visitor to the Tao Solandis station as the universe is about to fade out. Others come together in the final discussion between The Archive with its visitor.
There are moments of intrigue, suspense, love and loss, adventure, and wonder. While parts, like some of the best sci-fi classics, are full of new words, names, and expressions, the writing is fluid and engaging. The characters are fleshed out, have realistic dialogue and actions, and take meaning arcs in their journey. Perhaps you, too, will find the value in sharing stories, a valuable currency in some cultures explored in the book. It's a deep and engaging read that left me pondering...
There are moments of intrigue, suspense, love and loss, adventure, and wonder. While parts, like some of the best sci-fi classics, are full of new words, names, and expressions, the writing is fluid and engaging. The characters are fleshed out, have realistic dialogue and actions, and take meaning arcs in their journey. Perhaps you, too, will find the value in sharing stories, a valuable currency in some cultures explored in the book. It's a deep and engaging read that left me pondering...
August 11, 2025
"Tao Solandis" by Darrel William Moore was an enjoyable read. The main story takes place on a space station called Tao Solandis, which orbited a singularity called Ogmem. Tao Solandis is a library storing artifacts and data gathered for many millennia. It is the Black Hole Era of the Universe in the far future.
The story is written in a classical and poetic style, consisting of five interconnected stories. My favorite story was "Zero Sum Sunrise," due to the high concept level regarding an intelligence that transcends our reality but can manifest itself in our material world. The other stories are also interesting and contain interesting sci-fi concepts. Congratulations to Mr. Moore on a fantastic book. I recommend "Tao Solandis."
The story is written in a classical and poetic style, consisting of five interconnected stories. My favorite story was "Zero Sum Sunrise," due to the high concept level regarding an intelligence that transcends our reality but can manifest itself in our material world. The other stories are also interesting and contain interesting sci-fi concepts. Congratulations to Mr. Moore on a fantastic book. I recommend "Tao Solandis."
November 14, 2025
This was phenomenal and beautiful and smart and everything I want sci-fi to be that it just isn’t anymore. There is no way to describe how these stories overlap and intermingle with each other as much as with the main thread other than perfectly. To describe any detail would be a disservice to the wonder and excitement that lay in these pages, it unfolds in a way that could only be crafted by a master. I implore you to read this book and remember how great sci fi was and can still be with great authors like this who still ask the big questions and think the big thoughts.
October 7, 2025
It was a mediocre read. It had 6 interconnected short stories and although the concepts were good (Most from books like spin, fall of Hyperion, etc), being about 300 pages, it just felt rushed to point that I don’t feel much cohesiveness between the stories. It was as if the story for forcibly planted. I did like the plot progression of the book and the ending.
November 27, 2025
This is the second book by this author that I have read. The stories and the way they all connected at the end was absolutely amazing. I enjoyed some stories more than others but they all caused me pause. I think this is a good thing as sci fi, to me, has always been about exploration. Whether it is of one’s self or the world around us.
A great read.
A great read.
June 24, 2025
Tao Solandis is a heart moving six story tale cleverly woven into a single story. Each short self contained story has a completely different style, all of them made me think. I highly recommend. It’s everything sci-fi can and should be. I’ll remember this book for a very long time.
August 28, 2025
Didn’t really know what to expect going into this book, but after having read it, I thoroughly liked and enjoyed it. I found it thoughtful, engaging, stimulating and well written (even though there are spots with several typos). This was definitely my type of sci-fi..
November 19, 2025
3.5 rounding up. I enjoyed it but the stories are all short, he did tie them together nicely. Book could have used an editor, some big grammatical and spelling issues nobody caught. Overall I enjoyed the book.
December 20, 2025
Very good novel by Moore. It takes place in the very, very farthest future, but also a few billion years earlier. The prose was very clear, and the writing was like Asimov. One of the very best SF novels of the 21st century.
January 2, 2026
This book proved to me that I need to read more from this author. It’s a selection of wild speculative concepts, all tied together by an archive orbiting a black hole. I had a lot of questions throughout (as intended) and I was very satisfied by how it wrapped up.
November 1, 2025
I enjoy the author's youtube page, so I picked this up. He said he wrote the sci-fi book he would want to read, and turns out I wanted to read it too.
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