I'm finding it difficult to summarize this book without dishonest praise or undeserved criticism. The truth is the story at the heart of the novel is a simple one: a whodunit in space, and a surprisingly blinkered story of shunning the Other. The structure of it reminded me of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, with its rambling passages and none-too-subtle "extracts", which came across to me as the real reason the book existed -- an excuse to world-build.

While there were some wonderfully poetic turns of phrase, and a lot of fascinating assertions on the future of gender and sexuality, the predominance of the novel came off as naval-gazing.