This book wasn't really for me. It just didn't have a lot of the things I like.

I will confess that I liked the central conceit of the novel. It's basically a variation on [a:Arthur C. Clarke|7779|Arthur C. Clarke|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1357191481p2/7779.jpg]'s Third Law: that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I've always wanted to read a book that explored that in an interesting way. And I still haven't read one.

This book consists largely of the book's unlikeable protagonist explaining, in huge chunks of wildly uninteresting monologue, the rules of the universe to Mo, a philosophy professor so thinly drawn that she'd make a Bond girl look like a nuclear physicist, and yes that is a "The World is Not Enough" joke.

Speaking of jokes, this book is utterly bereft of them. There were places where the narrator attempts a sarcastic aside or a little light wordplay, but they're so poorly executed that I, someone who can even enjoy the comedy in such lowbrow contexts as Michael Bay movies or Netflix comedy specials, was left without a chuckle, giggle, snort, or even small grin.

The closest that this book has to a joke are its women characters. I was going to ask at my book club meeting whether they thought that Charles had ever met an adult human woman. Then I saw that he worked in tech from 1990-2000 (this book was originally serialized in late 2001, so was almost certainly written during his time in tech), so the answer to my question is "not very many". There are four women in the book, and all are caricatures. Three are so negative that the word "misogynist" would not be out of place. The fourth, you may be shocked to read, winds up getting abducted, then tied up naked, so isn't exactly a fully-formed standalone character, you know?

Anyway, no funny jokes, no women, lots of boring infodumps. It's amazing it eked out even a star.