What I look for in SF is of depth; and writing quality far more accomplished than in most books of this category.
The depth (and consequently the consistency of a world located in India in 2050) is there. The book is thick enough that the author had time to immerse ourselves in touches in the complexity of his world. The political, social and other issues are extensively served and developed, cleverly inserted into the plot and track characters.
The writing quality (I read VF) is quite good, enough at least for this becomes at any time a brake or a boring point that would attract attention.
There was every reason to make me love this novel (and these two points prevent me to note too adversely the book).
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The cross destiny (treated by alternating chapters) many actors who find themselves more or less involved in a discovery that could revolutionize humanity, narrated in a context of technological modernity or aeais (artificial intelligences in any form) are part now social panorama. On inter-state war background, futuristic real politik and social friction, the novel is ticking over long convolutions which it is hard to see where they will lead (which can be interesting when treated well, but now we it really loses). I believed, came to page 300 (!), Finally see off the plot to continue on a more compelling rhythm but quick through the first 250 pages returned, with a recovery after all the homebody story.
And it is this which has several times tempted to give up reading: printing down a long river without tub, where pages follow without it detects any climax or cliffhanger. This is probably the strength of the writing than to be realistic at this point that we forget that this is a novel, but on nearly 900 pages, it is long, too long. .. A novel that the reader can keep in expectation of the next sequences quickly loses it, which course the pages without finding a goal to his reading. This is what I experienced this many times and only writing and want to know the end allowed me to take that long.
I can understand those who loved this complexity (and it is laudable and rather - very - well controlled), but I did not want to read a documentary. I wanted to immerse myself in a novel, that would have been able to take me on emotions; feel disappointment or joy in anticipating and subsequently be faulted by a sudden development; vibrate with my characters face situations far from my everyday life with the impression to share special moments of their lives.
Instead I went through 900 pages of a certainly very elaborate and complex novel, but I do not withdraw the final as much satisfaction. And certainly not to say to my family that I have an absolutely great book their advisor.
Over the same period, I was reading in parallel the Horde Contrevent Damasio, and an almost equal number of pages I had more the feeling of being immersed in a world as complex and coherent, but with envy perpetual to know later. It's a different style so I would not push the comparison further, but she came to me because of their parallel reading.
