Comparing it to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash as a comparable superlong plausibly surreal American techno-dystopia, it's a little less tightly written and catch-phrasey, but it has a better plot. This is more readable. Like most 800-pagers, it could probably have been split in half (or into a series), focusing on, say, Marchers vs. Militias, Virtual (Black Swan) World vs. Real Pandemic World, the romances versus the hatreds, or I don't know, something. Still. It moves along, and the twists & turns are logical inside the framework of the novel story. Well worth the read.