Redemption Ark (Revelation Space, #2)

by Alastair Reynolds

The dead were discreetly prodded, but none of them showed the slightest signs of faking it.

She had died nobly, doing something courageous, if pointless, in the middle of a war.

He looked at her as if she was faintly stupid, or at the very least worryingly forgetful.

Volyova did not like planets at the best of times, and gas giants struck her as an unreasonable affront to human scale and frailty.

It was night, and by some rare alignment of personal mood and exterior optical conditions he found that Chasm City looked extraordinarily beautiful, as all human cities are obliged to at some point in their lives.

In the distance, a billion pebbles sighed orgasmically under the assault of another sea wave.