I finished The Carpet Makers. Really good collection of loosely connected vignettes about the way of life, history and functioning of a huge interstellar empire. The writing was nothing special, but it was to the point and managed to convey the atmosphere of each place and action really well. The pervading air is... I'm not sure what to call it, perhaps bleak or harsh. Not really hopeless but the characters and the reader constantly carry at the back of their minds the weight of a history of tens of thousands of years which translates either into a horribly monotonous existence or into a monstrous search for something more. I've seen complaints about the greatest revelation being anticlimactic and all, but I think it's precisely the pettiness of it that makes the entire thing horrifying and baffling. The epilogue was bittersweet but a good ending that circled back to the very first story.
The exposition is a bit clunky in the very beginning, but the story/stories flow nicely afterwards. The worst thing to me was the absolutely unnecessary and badly written romance right in the last/revelation chapter. I got the point of it but it was horrendously crafted and almost ruined what was supposed to be the climax of the entire book. Thankfully it was followed by the touching epilogue.
Really good book all in all.