Singularity's Ring

I just finished reading Singularity's Ring by Paul Melko.
This is Melko's first novel and it's a very good read. The central character is a pod of five people semi-joined in their consciousness. As the individuals are engineered for their abilities, it makes it important to the story that they are quite different with varied abilities. This is reminicent of a D&D game where you have to carefully balance a party to be equipped to deal with anything existence can throw at you, and certainly produces good character separation and definition.
There were some really good new ideas in the novel, I enjoyed the use of the Singularity in the novel, although it was really just used to form the environment/world rather than affecting the plot. The way that pans out is cool, but I won't spoil it, although I thought it was predictable.