Couldn't get through it... The science is interesting and clearly written, but it's just background noise to the character drama on the forefront. This novel's big problem is that it has aspirations to be something more: it wants so badly to be Real Literature (tm)... to elevate sci fi out of its genre gutter... but it only rarely reaches that level. The rest of the time is spent fumbling around in an overly wordy mix of boring interpersonal struggles.

Every so often it hits the mark. There is a brilliant chapter in which a character builds shelves in his home, an extended metaphor of applying his scientific rigor to the crooked and convoluted realities of human interactions. The timing is right on and the whole chapter is very satisfying.

On the flip side it's outweighed by incompetent segues: a highly romanticized scene in which a character accidentally stumbling in on his girlfriend using the toilet, vividly describing e.g. "the unending oval yawn" of the potty. Or there's Peterson, highly successful womanizing bureaucrat who spends most of the book trying to get every female character in bed - at one point it's revealed, almost apologetically, that the sex he's had thus far hasn't been very good... as if it's a concession to the reader or something. All told there's a lot of wading through the bland and occasionally awful just for a few bits of perfectly crafted writing (or as your interest may be: the "science" half of this SF novel). After nearly 400 pages, I had to give up.