Pretty mixed overall. The first 80% of the book are merely set-up and certainly feel that way. The ending is good… but not great and too short to justify the long wait.

A large part of the book plays in a feudal society, culturally and technologically roughly equivalent to ~19th century Europe. This reminds me a bit of Inversions, however this time it is embedded in something a lot more sci-fi: Said society lives inside a shell world, a constructed planet made of multiple layers with lifeforms of many different shapes, colors, and sizes living on each level. The shellworlds are interesting and described in some detail, but most of the other sci-fi concepts are just dumped onto the reader rather than being organically integrated into the story. This book is better than Inversions in balancing exploring the fantastic concepts of a post-scarcity society like the Culture and having believable setting to build an interesting story around, however, I still prefer the likes of Player of Games and Use of Weapons, because even though they also have their grand finales, I found them a lot more interesting during the build-up phase.