Qualified Perceptions

Like, what actually happened to Dr. Meninx? Did Hesperus kill him or did he really accidentally die? Did the rivalry with the little boy continue? The boy's *house* became a line, I think, but was that the boy himself? (Was the rivalry thus maybe a secondary motive behind the ambush?) The wiping out of the ghost soldiers in Palatial foreshadowed the wiping out of the first machines - was that actually because Palatial sunk its hooks deep enough in Gentian to still influence them? Was someone behind Palatial being brainwashing? It seemed like it *ought* to have been someone's nefarious plot.

I've read most of Reynolds' novels (not his collected short stories). Pushing Ice and Century Rain recently enough that I wrote
reviews of them and thus remember them; the Revelation Space books longer ago, so I only remember liking them sufficiently to keep picking the author up. :)