Multiple people of similar taste assured me this was a masterpiece and that I ought to give it another chance.

How much you'll be able to enjoy this may depend on your tolerance for scientific explanation and discussion as a primary mode of exposition. It may be almost as important that you're able to appreciate that which you don't understand, as there are many mathematical and physics concepts presented that seem to assume that the reader has at least some familiarity with them. As this book is almost exclusively concerned with ideas and theorizing to the exclusion of almost all else, I strongly caution anyone to temper their expectations if they would think to read it for anything else other than that.

Various perspectives are followed and they're all important and have their roles to play that no other character would be able to fulfill. There's a character that could be called the protagonist but I don't believe that would be accurate. The plot, setting, and everything else exists to provide a narrative framework for the ideas.

I'm unable to discern how much of this should be interpreted religiously or as a warning against worship of anything other than the fundamental truths of the universe, namely math, physics and similar. The initial perspective character has an immaculate conception and several of the characters have religiously themed names. However, religion is also explicitly described by a main character as being something to have been long since forsaken by even the most primitive conservatives.

It has a lot of great ideas that were at the forefront of his time, some of which have become realized in minor ways. Unfortunately this is mired in the science which decreases its level of accessibility. For some it's better to entirely satisfy relatively few than to satiate many. I wouldn't include myself in that entirely satisfied.

Overall I'd classify this as a work of intellectual masturbation. It starts off slow and slowly increases tempo over time trying to last a long time, but eventually all restraint is lost and it's going at it as quickly as possible. Orgasm is reached and one begins to wonder with one's post-orgasmic insight why one had done any of it all and resumes what one was doing beforehand.

I'll read more of his novels.

This book was quite a journey...if you're into having your mind twisted, then untwisted, knotted into ribbons, then have them untied, only to have your thoughts tangled and untagled again and again just when you felt you got the hang of the world being presented here..then you would enjoy this.
Pretty heavy on particle physics & astrophysics & biology fiction.
I kept having a love-hate relationship with this book. I really liked the ideas, but at the same time I was a bit frustrated and slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of fictitious elements and theories presented, however grounded in actual physics they were. It would've been nice if a bit more explanations were offered, even if it added a few dozen pages to the book, just to make up for the time the author spent in his mind building all this up. Glad he discussed his inspirations at the end of the book.
Reading this was quite an experience... a journey is the best way to describe it

Once I got used to the fact that there's no character development at all because it all went into developing the backstories behind imaginary technology I started to really get into it. One of the best scifi books I've read in a while!