The Architect of Aeons

This is the kind of book that rewards the small number of readers willing to commit to it — millennia of posthuman history, philosophical ambition rare in space opera, and a prose style that demands to be taken seriously. Kirkus was right that there are dull intervals, and the book is genuinely inaccessible to anyone who hasn't followed the series from the start. But for the dedicated reader of literary hard SF, this fourth volume delivers exactly what it promises.