Reynolds makes the interesting choice to switch view points from Arufura Ness to her sister in this sequel to Revenger, the story of space pirates, space tomb raiders and historical mysteries. It's quintessential Reynolds in many  ways - grim characters, deep mysteries, slow start. It's also a better sequel than any I can remember from this author - hopefully Reynolds can stick the landing with the obviously necessary third volume and give a satisfying conclusion.

Probably the last book I'll finish this year!

I struggled with this until nearly the half-way mark, considering quitting a couple of times. I'm used to slow starts from Reynolds' solo books but this one wasn't so much slow as terribly disjointed, making it difficult to get involved with the story. Abrupt leaps in the passage of time with very little apparent connective tissue stopped it feeling much like a novel at all and had me wondering if a "story suite" (as Le Guin would call it) of shorts would have been a better idea. The second half works more like a traditional novel narrative and allowed me to connect more to characters and see what all the preceding vignettes were for, thus rescuing the book for me.

I haven't read any Baxter prior to this but I can see the influence of Reynolds all over it.

Very disjointed.

This is a sequel to a book I haven't read...by two authors who weren't involved in the original.