I have been reading Alistair Reynolds novel "Redemption
Ark"(2003) and found it disappointing. It´s not a bad
book, but "Revelation Space", "Chasm City" and
"Diamond Dogs & Turquoise Days" were better.

"Redemption Ark" would have needed huge amounts of
editing and re-writing. As I read it, one famous horror
author comes to my mind - Stephen King. "Redemption
Ark" feels like it would be a space opera written by Stephen
King. It moves slowly, has sideplots that are pretty useless,
has useless minor characters who simply haven´t that
much to do with the plot, it´s main characters act stupidly,
the characters feel flatter than in the previous books. It´s
not a bad book, it´s just that it feels like the author has
cobbled it together with great pain from parts that have
little to do with each other. And there´s too many infodumps
where previous happenings in the Inhibitor universe are
retold. Reynolds could have put a chronology and a little
explanation in the form "what happened before" on the
first pages of the book, it would have achieved the same
results in a better way.

I have now read 430 pages of the book and for all that
has happened, the plot has moved about as much as the
British forces in the battle of the Somme. It´s not a bad
book, but "Chasm City" was a masterpiece and it´s not.