Dichronauts, biggest mindfuck of 2017 for sure! (it's highly recommended, just keep pen and paper ready to grok all the non-euclidian shenanigans)

> Provenance by Ann Leckie

I really really wanted to like this, but I just couldn't. Not my style unfortunately, but everyone keeps suggesting it so it's likely me that's the problem.

I liked how it drilled deep into themes that were important to the cultures in the story, which were very human cultures but not any specific Earth cultures. It was a glimpse into a small part of a large, coherent world.

But you have to like the characters or you can't get anywhere. People have described Stephen Baxter novels in similar ways, but I can't stand any of the characters.

That's interesting, I love Baxter's works and characters but finishing Ancillary's first book took me months and was painful. I liked the universe and the themes so I ended up reading the wikipedia summaries of the rest of the serie.

It just came to my mind that I like the manifold trilogy way more than the xelee cycle though.