Part of the answer to the mystery of obliterated civilisations haunts a starship called the Nostalgia for Infinity. This old, battered lighthugger carries a strange cargo of powerful ands inhuman weaponry, only partially mastered and understood by the sole crew member to stay mainly awake, Ilya Volyova. And what Ilya wants is a gunner. Her last one went mad.
The perilous Chasm City, Yellowstone, in the Epsilon Eridani system, is home to a likely candidate. Ana Khouri, a hardened soldier embittered by loss, now pursues the career of contract killer. That Ilya's going to pick her up is inevitable.
The lives of Dan, Ilya, Ana and others come together in a quest to make sense of one of the most original and terrifying artefacts in recent science fiction, a deadly threat from an immensely distant past to any sentient and space-faring species.

'Revelation Space' is a tense, taut and rewarding book, and also the first SF novel I've reviewed in a while that is decidedly of a genre, part of no mainstream and none the worse for that. It's also the first of a series pursued in 'Redemption Ark' and 'Absolution Gap', which was published last November; and Reynolds has written a novel about 'Chasm City'.
Teased by accounts of the more recent work, I preferred to begin at the beginning. I'm very glad I did.