The first third of the book started so strongly, the writing was engaging, the setup was fun, the promise of scifi wonders had me eager to see what would happen. The middle bits didn't get me very interested at all, and by 75% of the way through the book when it's all laid bare, I was only continuing on to see if there was anything else to be told in the story (there is not). I would have been so much happier stopping after the first third and then using my imagination for the rest of the book. I know it's not very fair to criticize a book for being a very different story than I was hoping to read, but there we are. Given the writing at the opening of the book, I'm really curious to read other things by this author, but I wouldn't recommend this one to friends.