Revelation Space

What a paradox of a book. It simultaneously felt like a giant expansive space opera with Big Ideas and also a claustrophobic minor mystery story with just a few characters and locations. Really odd pairing of writing styles.

I appreciated the specific focus on the stories of the characters but the personal writing wasn't very good IMHO, a confusing array of shifting motivations. the primary drama and changes in character motivation seemed motivated by "surprise here's this alien influence you didn't know about", over and over again. Awkward.

What did work was the big universe story, a sort of cosmic existential horror along the lines of Mass Effect. The development of the main conceit was fairly interesting, just kind of clumsy getting there on the way. Also felt like the book could have been half as long without losing any of the story.