Strange writer, this Alastair Reynolds.

His Revelation Space trilogy has some of the best ideas in hard science fiction. It's breathtaking in scope and ambition, and it keeps surprising me at every turn. After several re-reads I still find new, amazing stuff in it. It's big, it's impresive, it's incredibly imaginative. It also has horrible idiotic characterisation that makes some parts of it almost unreadable. Everyone is nasty, short-tempered, overly sensitive teenager, even when they're not supposed to be.

With the Prefect Dreyfus novels he seems to have matured somewhat. I no longer hate all the characters; they're not special, but they no longer make me want to stop reading, so I can focus on the story and imagination ... but at least with this novel, it's in short supply. Sure, Elysium Fire is a competently written high/hard sci-fi detective story, but it does not fill me with awe the way, say, Redemption Ark does. It's absolutely not bad, but it's just, kind of, there.

I find that I actually prefer a really original novel with a lot of weak spots to this all-around okay story. I don't know if I'm being harsh; Elysium Fire is not bad by any means. It's just that the special something I expect from Reynolds wasn't really present here.