Poseidon's Wake

Poseidon's Wake, Alastair Reynolds

A disappointing conclusion to a minor trilogy by Reynolds. Stuffed full of boring or annoying characters, dulled by long-winded step-by-step plotting, and rendered immediately forgettable by the squandering of its own mysteries. None of which is helped by its packaging up of a basic fact of life ( = the universe is meaningless and finite) as a much-talked-about plot device, The Terror. Douglas Adams did that much better - and much funnier - with his Total Perspective Vortex.