Title: What is this crap?
Review: I have completely turned 180 degrees from being a fan of Baxtor to absolutely loathing the garbage he's been writing in recent years. He had a good run early on, but has totally lost touch with his base. I loved Ring, The Time Ships, Flux, all the way up to Vacuum Diagrams, which seems to have been a turning point in his career--for the worst. This novel, like all of his recent work, suffers from very weak character development, a highly suspect series of plots. In his early stories, the pathetic character development was entirely excusable because his science was rock solid and exciting! I loved his Xeelee stories and the whole dark matter creatures were very engaging. But lately, he's focused too much on personal interests that are completely non-interesting to this reader. His attitude is that of an informed and wizened academic, but he comes across in fictional form as foolishly optimistic that his ridiculous themes are believable.
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