Everyone is an asshole. Also, everyone has taken on a new nom de guerre for some reason. In other words, this is classical Revelation Space science fiction that I'd hate and rate way down if the actual big sci-fi stuff wasn't incredibly imaginative.

Alastair Reynolds does ominous and big like no one in the business. It's just that everything related to characterisation rubs me the wrong way. When reading Elysium Fire I noted that the characters were maybe not as awful as earlier but the sense of wonder was missing. It seems like we can get one but not the other.

... but given the choice I'd still take the sense of wonder. So maybe I should just stop whining and enjoy the books.