While there is still a heavy dose of the off-beat cultural and technological references, this book seemed to spend a bit more time devoted to fleshing out the major characters and establishing what is making them tick. You can take this to apply to the case of a once monolithic inscrutable corporation which ends up being sent off along a new trajectory by the end of it all. The reader has to pay attention to what's going on or risk getting rather lost along the way, what with all the threads that are in play simultaneously.

Is this third book in the Bigend series the last one? My hunch is that it will be, but I won't be upset if Gibson proves me wrong.