I'm about halfway through, and I suppose I should wait till I'm done to comment, but I just couldn't stay silent about this book.
I don't often read over-500-page books these days; I just don't have the spare time or the focus I did in earlier stages of life. But I'm seriously glad I picked this one up. Once in a while, there comes an SF novel of such quality that it succeeds at breaking down the boundaries of the genre's fragmented sub-categories. A good book can cover two or three; the rare great book can seem to span almost the entire field. This is one of those. The science is rigorous enough to easily qualify as hard SF, but the speculation into the resulting societal change is complex enough and well enough justified to also be great social SF. The characters are complex and deep enough to be great character-driven SF, but the perfectly paced plot and sense of adventure make it a juicy piece of space opera. It steps into the realms of cyber- and singularity-punk, but without getting bogged down by the problems that often plague these genres, and dips into the mind-bending mystery of ancient ineffable alien races reminiscent of Pohl's Heechee or Clarke's Firstborn.
Normally, a novel that tried this many things at once would fall apart into mush. But here it's backed up an obvious master of the writerly craft, and he holds it together masterfully. I was surprised to learn this was a first novel.
I know I'm going overboard with the praise here, but I honestly feel this deserves the superlatives. If there's any justice in the world, this book will go down in SF history, as this decade's great SF novel, to be mentioned alongside the likes of Dune or Foundation.
