Scenes are written for dramatic effect, with MAJOR plot errors in the process! One example: A character is confined/jailed in an airlock. Later the crew tries to check on him, but somehow can't, so they burn a hole through the door and reach inside to OPEN THE DOOR WITH INSIDE CONTROLS!!
Also written in an extremely pedantic manner... never use one word where a half dozen will do. He also uses a lot of unnecessarily convoluted sentences with unusual word selection. even brilliant people will need your thesaurus ( )

This is one rather large book but, thankfully, it's one rather good book as well that keeps those pages turn, turn, turning.

I think my only complaint is that when Volyova uses the Nostalgia for Infinity as a murder weapon by accelerating it and braking it in order to smash one of her crew to death, there's no explanation as to what happened to everything else in this massive ship that wasn't nailed down properly.   Like, what happened to all the ship-slime, rats, shuttle craft, the weapons cache and many other things besides: were all of the these things nailed down to protect them against such repeated high G acceleration and forward braking phases?   There were many ways of carrying out this killing that didn't require any further explanation, but to use the method that Volyova did and then for Alastair to just fail to explain what happened to everything else in the ship does annoy me somewhat.

Because the ship isn't designed to brake in the forward motion.   It's designed to accelerate to one G continuously up to the half way point of the journey, then it will flip 180 degrees and use the same one G thrust to slow itself down.   Why would the engines suddenly be capable of huge 10 G burns in both directions just to kill one person?   I really think it's needs a proper explaining.

But yeah, i know, that's how picky i have to be to find any real criticism of this immense book.   It is the only fault i could find, and to be fair, most people would probably read this and not even think about it.

I do hope that doesn't put anyone off (not that i think for one moment that it would ), because other than that one bizarre murder it's super good, great writing, great characters, everything as we've come to expect so far in this series.

And i look forward to some more: next up is Nightingale. ( )

Awesome backdrop and intriguing plot line.

The characters never quite spoke to me though. They are different than each other, and mostly believable, but I couldn't relate. Some seemed to change with each plot twist, and some never changed at all, even when they were someone else. (That'll make more sense after you've read the book).

Put the characters together with the obvious hook to the next book tied into the ending, and it's a very mixed up package of great and meh for me.

Worth reading, not a favourite. ( )

I finally finished it.

I really had trouble getting into this book -- so much so that I've been trying for years to read it, up to and including trying different formats (print, e-edition, audiobook), even though it's come highly recommended, especially to fans of Peter F. Hamilton, of which I am an enthusiastic member.

I finally got into the audiobook this time, and honestly, I don't know why this doesn't click with me well, since the plot is interesting and likely to appeal to me. I think, maybe, it's that we spend so much time so far away from the plot -- like a large part of the first third to half of the book only deals with the overarching threat incidentally. I guess I had a hard time figuring out what was important and what was flavor, and an awful lot of it was flavor. Maybe it becomes more important later.

I'm probably going to keep going, now that I've gotten through it. And I'm glad I did. I just..eh.. I dunno. ( )

3.5*
Grand space opera but for some reason, I just didn't enjoy it as much as I had expected to. Perhaps it was the constant switching of perspective with dates that seemed to indicate switches in time as well... or maybe it was that, except for Ana Khouri, I didn't develop much fondness for the characters. Sylveste shows himself to be a selfish jerk in the first chapter and very little that happens in the book made me change that opinion (in fact, the final quarter made me dislike him even more). ( )