I really really agree with Akiva here. This book is a mysteriously compelling mess of really astonishingly cool ideas, weirdly inconsistent plot pacing, and characters I found myself really liking even though they don't make a ton of sense.

At its best moments it reminded me of the more existentially-disturbing Greg Egan stories, e.g. Dark Integers. In some ways it's basically a three-star book: it's overly-expository and doesn't completely live up to its promise; but I'm giving it a star back for the sheer scale and ambition of its ideas. Really hard to put down because you can't stop thinking about what the next twist will be.