Alastair Reynolds - Slow Bullets

Slow Bullets opens with a vast interstellar conflict, but quickly focuses down on a small group. Scur, a conscript, is hoping to survive to the end of the war - which seems to be imminent, but she suddenly finds herself the prisoner of a notorious war criminal. After torture she's left for dead... and wakes up on a massive interstellar transport vessel. Waking up it appears that something is very wrong- Scur doesn't know why she's on the ship and the ship itself seems to be malfunctioning.

As Scur tries to work out what is happening, the rest of the sleepers on the ship wake up and factions form. It becomes clear that they've travelled a long way in time and space and something's happened to humanity.

This short novella is a bit of a locked room mystery. The reader works out along with Scur what has happened - its quite a revelation. But Scur's motivation is very personal and one of the fun things about the book is that the way she uses the shipboard factions to manipulate things in her own interests.

It is not the best of Reynold's stories, and quite separate to the larger Revelation Space series. But its a decent enough read and fans of Reynold's galaxy spanning books will enjoy this narrowing down of perspective.