I wanted to like this book, but my suspension of disbelief was hard to overcome. I had particular problems with the energy systems described. Any explanation I came up with for the things like mega-elephants winding springs, like fossil fuel bans or running out and electricity becoming expensive, make no sense in a world where the street lighting are gaslights burning "approved" methane.

That is a problem given how much of the early part of the book is mostly "world-building". It takes far too long for the actual story to really get moving. Once that happened, I was much more able to ignore the scenery/details that didn't make sense to me.

I suspect that if I hadn't been listening to the audiobook (at 2x speed) in the car and switching to another book safely would have required pulling off and downloading something else, I might not have powered through long enough to let the story kick in.

There definitely were some interesting ideas and, upon reflection from the end of the book, the various plot threads were pulled together nicely, but I almost didn't see that because the world didn't make 100% sense to me.