The setting is really cool. It has little to do with real science or hard sci-fi but as a quasi-fantasy space opera it works really well. It is epic in the way that high magic epic fantasy is epic, except it has a unique setting and creatures in space rather than the normal epic fantasy tropes....
I've read the Hellhole books that Kevin J. Anderson Co - write with Brian Herbert. They were to date the best sci-fi books I had ever read. The Dark Between The Stars rates up there with them. Each chapter is written about a particular recurring character and what is happening to them at this poi...