Another fat Reynolds book - nearly 700 pages this time. I thought so well of Revelation Space that I bought this one in another Kathmandu bookshop just on spec. Unfortunately, I skipped the two intervening books in the series (backpackers can’t be choosy), infecting this one with in-references I didn't really get, but the narration was quite helpful. As humans expand to colonise the nearby star systems (still slower than light, thankfully) they disturb an ancient army of machines called the Inhibitors who seek to exterminate all intelligent life in the galaxy. One colony on the ocean world of Ararat finds an unborn messiah to lead their evacuation to a new star system exhibiting a vanishing gas giant that might hold the key to their survival. So yeah, pretty crazy plot – and, like Rev Space, it spins way out to weirdness towards the end. Quite gripping though, with a pretty fast-paced narration. It’s nice the way the galaxy is being over-run by Poms still armed with a range of modern British slang. Also, building on the concept of religion being a virus of the mind, one colony has to force its inhabitants to submit to an injected Indoctrinal Virus for them to keep their faith. Cute. Rev Space had slightly better physics, but this book was better written with a more comprehensible plot. A trekking read (Langtang this time) like Rev Space before it.