Name: Edges
ISBN: 9781937197261

Linda Nagata

Deception Well is a world on the edge, a lone surviving outpost at the farthest reach of human expansion. Now a determined crew resolves to cross the light years to explore the fallen worlds of old and discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins. A far-future space-faring adventure from the award-winning author of VAST.

Edges

Great space opera novel - Nagata's big ideas reminded me of We Are Legion (We Are Bob) and Revelation Space - but with more emotional engagement than the latter. If you liked either of those books, you'll love this one, as well. It had a very gripping, tense and well-written finale - I loved the last 25% in particular. 

It's about a group of people from "the edge" of the universe who've survived millennia of being hunted by alien AI, and who use a captured alien ship to fly back toward the origin of humanity to find out if any other humans are still alive (and if so, what they are like). Before reaching their goal (which will be reached in book 2, I think) they encounter a post-human godlike creature, who becomes their most dangerous foe yet. 

My only caveat: the publisher really shouldn't sell this as book 1 of a new series. All the characters were introduced in previous books and knowledge of them is taken for granted, they have complicated backstories with each other that aren't explained, there is no recap of what happened, and there is no explanation or glossary of the various terms used for new/alien technologies (reef, ghost, instantiate, makers, philosopher cells, etc.). It was more or less possible to guess what each term means by the end of the book, but I think one really needs to start this series with The Bohr Maker to really get it and to enjoy the full emotional impact. E.g. it starts out with the emotional re-union of two lovers that is hard to connect with if you haven't followed these two for several novels already. By the end, I was very attached to them though.

That said, I'm looking forward to returning to the beginning and reading the series from the start so that everything will make more sense to me. I'm very happy to have discovered a really good author with such huge ideas (and books that don't require a thousand pages to communicate them).