"The Risen Empire" and "The Killing of Worlds"

Ross and I both recently polished off this SF duology by Scott Westerfeld. These books are space opera on a grand scale; interplanetary empires spanning 80 worlds and vast distances, a ruling caste of immortals, grand space battle, intelligent machines, loads of future tech... but he handles these science fiction cliches with ease and a clever touch. He introduces a mysterious plot element early in the first book and maintains the suspense throughout the two volumes while also jumping between past and present, multiple planets and spaceship.

Good work; his handling of the suspense and the tension between the various factions never falters (the risen dead - brought back to life via a symbiant, the Rix, a tech-loving culture who promote computer intelligences, the pinks - pro-life and anti-death). I appreciated the extent to which threads were left untied at the end of the book; there are certain to be great changes in the Empire, but we are left to imagine what they might be.