The Naked God by Peter F Hamilton (12)
Well, it certainly took long enough to read - its a quite a big book. As seems to be the way of things, I don't think the final book in the series was as good as the first, but it was thankfully more on-point than Neutronium Alchemist. Its ultimately a great series that I'd recommend to anyone looking for a fun Space Opera, but it could have been better.
My primary criticism, insofar as I'm qualified to criticize at all, is that it seems like Hamilton couldn't decide what he wanted to write about. It felt as if there were two really interesting ideas he tried to turn into a series: A galaxy spanning space opera, and a soul search quest about the nature of souls and the afterlife. Its not that the two ideas are incompatible, but the execution wasn't 100%, which left me feeling like something was missing.
Hard to imagine anything is missing from a book that makes most of the Malazan novels look reasonably sized... But there seemed to be more story to tell, but it all came crashing to a close right at the end. The ending was not a blindside at least, with consistent story telling and foreshadowing making the end feel through-out rather than slapped together, but I was still left wanting.
Even still, its one of the best scifi I've read in a while, covering topics not typically brought up in the genre. Read it!