lightreads

Humans of the twenty-sixth century live in a galaxy more empty than it really should be, haunted by the ghosts of species long extinct. There's 550 pages of intricate plotting here, so I'll just say it's a hard SF novel that jumps from an archaeological expedition to an alien plague to quantum mechanics to neuroprogramming.

The good: Women! who are cool! and who do very cool things! Shiny hard SF ideas. A scattering of really disturbing and effective images that will stick with me. Excellent and creative worldbuilding.

The meh: Choppy timing. A few stupid writer tricks. Over-stretched dramatics.

I think hard SF is like a gecko. I'm like, "ooh, you're an awfully cool little reptile, aren't you?" and it totally is, but at a certain point I start thinking, "you know, my dog is nice and furry. I like furry." Which is an overtired way of saying that I enjoyed this book and will be getting the sequel, but it suffers from the perennial hard SF problem -- characters who are so futurified, there's very little to latch onto.

But really good, for hard SF -- definitely my favorite of the recent reads (Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear, etc). Also see above re: women, because that really can't be over-emphasized.