"The thing I love about Egan’s work is that neither the scientific ideas nor the narrative are there to carry the other. The idea that humans could exist at seven different scales isn’t present to make a detective story more complicated, nor does the detective story (which turns into a serious political situation) exist simply to enable wild, what-if fantasies. Instead, they work together to make this a genuinely thought-provoking story on both a political and a scientific level."