Book Note: Karl Schroeder, Permanence

This note contains spoilers for the book.

First book of his I've read (his previous Ventus got pretty good word-of-mouth). I'll definitely be reading some more of him.

In this one, the characters are interesting enough, and the main one develops from unwanted girl-child on a station, to Cycler Captain and major political force; if a little sketchily. But what's really outstanding is the worldbuilding, the various societies, the background universe. They've got both slow FTL and fast NAFAL travel, and in a reversal of what most people have done, FTL needs the mass of a serious star to work. So the worlds of the Halo, around brown dwarfs and such, are left out when FTL breaks out. There's also a sub-plot about the whole history of civilization in the universe, going back to the species that managed to wipe out everybody else in the universe about 65 million years ago (why yes, that IS about when the dinosaurs bought it).