I recently finished the trilogy so thought I'd share my thoughts with the world!
Revelation Space
Having read this for the first time a while back it was nice to reread it and pick up on things I'd missed the first time around.
So the plot, in case you don't know... The story centres around archaeologist Dan Sylveste and his team working on the remote planet Resurgam, digging up the remains of the old Amarantin species who were cataclysmically wiped out in The Event a very long time ago. Sylveste thinks there's something serious to be learnt about this for the human settlement, but hardly anyone else agrees with him... turns out, of course, that they're all in a lot of danger. Also to contend with is the crew of the lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity, who need Sylveste in order to cure their Captain who is dying of a horrific illness called the Melding Plague. And finally there is Ana Khouri, a soldier turned assassin who is employed to infiltrate the crew of the Infinity in order to kill Sylveste.
The scope covered in this book is incredible. Reynolds has a PhD in astrophysics, and you can tell - all the technology and inventions are at least vaguely scientifically plausible.
The plot is fast paced and he has a (slightly annoying but effective) tendency to skip parts of the explanation scenes to keep the tension on the reader - it all does get explained eventually, and fits together very well. The plot twists are many and unexpected which is good, and I felt the ending worked well.
His solution to the Fermi Paradox (the universe is so big, so why havent we found any other life yet??) is simple yet ingenious, although I havent been reading sci fi for very long so I dont know if any other authors have tried something similar before.
My only criticisms would be his characters. Whereas they werent too bad, and some were better than others, he needs to work on making them a little more believable. It seemed to me most of them were shaped from the same mould. Also, he annoyingly doesnt describe them properly at the start, which makes it hard to picture them in your head while reading. I've seen this happen before in books - you get halfway through and the author suddenly tells you that the character you took to be a boy with an androgenous name... is actually a girl. Annoying as hell.
Personally I found this to be the best book in the series, overall, and I would really recommend it to anyone. Although, with most sci fi, a basic knowledge of physics and astrophysics would be useful.
