Exile’s Burn is not hard science fiction (as Iain Banks said: "you have to have completely new ideas in there somewhere or it doesn’t really cut it as proper SF") and should not be read as such. I don’t want to make it sound like this book is completely empty on interesting ideas, I particularly liked the limitations put on hyperspace travel, they’re just not very central to the story. Rather than a believable vision of the future (the word ‘quaint’ as used by the main villain comes to mind) it is a well written piece of space fantasy. Think something in between Star Wars and Firefly. It has its fair share of decently interesting characters and a plot that, while segmented into convenient sized ‘episodes’ which may go off on tangents, never loses sight of where it’s going. Perhaps to the point of being just a little too predictable.

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