The first 20% of this book is written in a literally backwards timeline. Characters walk backwards, things happen in a backwards order, etc. It may have been a cute plot device for, say, 5 or 10 pages, but to have a substantial portion of this book like that made it nearly unreadable. Once I slogged through that, the rest of the book completely failed to reward me for my effort. It was bland and boring. Dave Lister lost all of his charm, and The Cat and Kryten managed to lose nearly all of their personality. Rimmer is the only character who not only maintained a personality, but actually grew as a character.J.Ja