The Wizard Hunters, Martha Wells Enjoyable fantasy with convincingly comfortable characters and some nice dialog, but it petered out towards the end, which isn't a great sign for the first book of a trilogy.

Vitals, Greg Bear
Wobbles between a spooky conspiracy story and in incoherent one. It generally but not completely succeeds in communicating to the reader the fear and uncertainty of the protagonist.

Chasm City, Alastair Reynolds
I'm not sufficiently versed in SF to say with certainty which 60's or 70's novel set the emplate for this sort of story; Samual Delaney comes to mind, as does Iain M. Banks. The protagonist works through a plot, joined midstream, which also showcases a world or universe of the author's creation, and frequently there are unsettling plot revelations about the protagonist's history. Chasm City is more of the same, and readable, but neither the characters nor the story nor the environment are noteworthy or compelling.

Light Raid, Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice
Connie Willis is such a flawlessly confident writer, reading a bad novel with her name on it is like watching Lance Armstrong fall off his bicycle. Painful and eerily attractive. A fairly dreadful novel, with many standard elements from Connie Willis but a claustrophobic scope and amateurish setting.