It's funny how memory works... before this re-read, I would have talked highly of Pandora's Star. I would have said I was especially impressed with the detailed alien world-building of the main protagonist. In my memory, this was a major component of the story...

Well, memory isn't always to be trusted, because this book is not that story.

True, it does have the interesting alien world-building, but it is such a minor part of it. In fact, the alien protagonist isn't revealed until over 60% of the way into the book. You get a few tens of pages of development... and then it goes away for most of the rest of the book until the very final part.

What comes before is pure soap-opera. Not the riveting "Den and Angie" type soap build-up; more like Eldorado. Countless characters;flat dialogue; disconnected, convoluted plot-lines that may at some point in the future join together... I'm a sucker for a good build-up, but there's a limit, you know?

Like the Nights Dawn trilogy by the same author, this needed a good editing. That interesting alien world-building and protagonist would have worked really well in a 400-500 page book.

As it is, this just feels needlessly long.