I've loved everything else I've read by Thompson, so the fact that it too me two goes to get through this, and I didn't really enjoy it was a bit of a surprise.

Of the good: the world-building is fabulous, the characters are varied and complex. Of the not so good: there is too much going on, and the writing didn't sell this to me as a coherent story. I felt that the story line relating to the Lagos Station came adrift partway through the story, and found it distracting.

Also, I wasn't expecting something so grimly dark -- it would be a great disaster movie, but a lot of the description was more baffling than enlightening. Some of the ending sections were unclear - there were characters that appeared to just be dropped into and out of the story, and while there was significant lipservice to potential environmental disaster, that story line seemed to be abandoned once the story made it to the planet surface.

For a 'sinister mystery', as touted on the back of the book, I found the character motivations unconvincing, the solution of the mystery hand-waved, and the consequences opaque. ( )

It could have been a much better book. The premise is great, the concepts are cool and interesting. The writing is very good throughout. Now, let's talk about all my BUTs:
- Flat, uninteresting characters - because they never have the time to grow, and it's all tell, not show.
- Insufficient world-building. I came away knowing and understanding very little about this universe, with more questions than answers. All the chapters set on Logos station felt unnecessary and dull.
- Too many POV's, too many plot threads making the story too convoluted for its own good, backstories that did not add anything important to the narrative.
- The solution to the mystery was underwhelming, to say the least. Brisbane had no agency, neither in his backstory, nor after. The "let's criticise capitalism and crazy billionaires going to space" storyline came out of nowhere - and destroyed the book. (Not that I mind said critique...)
- Too many rogue AI:s...

I'm glad it was a fast read ;)

P.S. I did like the wolf. ( )

What a weird book. It wasn't terrible, and I appreciated its quick pace, but it also just wasn't all that compelling.
Things I liked -- the Afrofuturism, the Lagos system, the fact that many of the characters followed Nigerian belief systems. I also quite liked the random shipboard animals and the bizarre and sudden flowering within the ship, the intense alien/not-alien ness of Joke's nature, Campion's commitment to her passengers.
Then there's the rest of it, which was... very random. There was a mystery, but not a good one. There was character sex -- ok, cool, but the characters weren't well developed enough to care. There were conspiracies and a potentially galaxy-war-creating fallout that isn't covered in this book. And the detective has random powers that allow him to catapult to insights. Uh, ok? I kept waiting for it to all come together, but it didn't. The end. ( )

The audiobook for this one is a little difficult to follow so I had to check out the e-book, too, to make sure I was catching the details. I enjoyed the first half more than the second, and the ending is unsatisfying to me, but overall I found this book to be a very interesting take on both a mystery and a space/sci-fi novel. ( )

Thompson's most recent novel is a work I've been meaning to read all year, and I found it quite worthwhile. Billed as a locked-room mystery, this is more like a thriller in space, where Thompson has gone to some lengths to build in the actual experiences of real-life astronauts. The result is that this story feels like a cross between one of Andy Weir's problem-solving stories, and Neal Asher's tales based on body horror and ultra violence. Apart from that, Thompson has lost none of his flair for describing hard-boiled organizational politics, so if you enjoyed his "Wormwood" trilogy you should enjoy this book. My impression is that this is a free-standing novel, but I wouldn't mind seeing Thompson return to this milieu. ( )