Revelation Space
BSFA-shortlisted debut that established hard space opera's gothic wing; the Dark-Forest-adjacent Inhibitor solution to the Fermi paradox predates Liu's and haunts the whole subgenre.
Series Guide
Revelation Space
Reynolds's gothic hard-SF universe: lighthugger ships, plague-warped architecture, and the Inhibitors — machinery left on watch to suppress spacefaring life, for reasons that turn out to be uncomfortably good.
In the Guide
Chasm City
BSFA Award winner; a standalone noir that many readers rate the most purely enjoyable Revelation Space novel, and proof the universe could carry any genre dropped into it.