Light (M. John Harrison)

I read this quite a while ago. A tough read but a good one - would be difficult not to be somewhat decent given what a good stylist Harrison is. I remember hearing this is him tackling space opera (again - he already did with "The Centauri Device" - a novel he now dislikes). Very memorable, with some extremely memorable individual scenes - I can remember the arcs of the three main characters extremely well after all these years. To a degree, I think the engagement with space opera was a little superficial - it was basically "let's take the assumptions of this genre, and play them out in the most pessimistic way possible". But there is enough uniqueness in what actually happens to make it it's own thing, and not merely a pastiche. I can't imagine recommending this book to anyone, however, as who could predict who would like it given it's bleakness.