I rarely DNF a book, but 180 pages in I had to give up. At first it seems like a deep and novel story, but under the window-dressing it does not have much quality to offer.

When Mycroft jumped out of a window and stopped a random assault (rape?) from happening in an alley below, which read like a cheesy scene out of some superhero movie: "oh sh** its Mycroft the bad-ass, its not worth it bro lets go" I just laughed and decided to stop there.  I thought this must be a joke, and part of me wondered if Mycroft is just an unreliable narrator making himself out to be something he's not in his own story, but reading other reviewers comments its just not that deep a book.

The characters are not interesting. I particularly dislike it in a novel when every character is rich, powerful and absolutely awesome. It comes across vert flat to me, for example every world leader has Mycroft on speed dial because he's so popular and awesome (bore). Or how Mycroft's friends are all world-famous bad asses (bore).

The world building feels like a childish thought experiment where all humans will happily divide themselves into one of 7 clans. Like some sort of global sorting hat from Harry Potter. One clan (of ~2 Billion people) is full of Olympic athletes who all wear doc martins that they colour in with pens? What? Absolutely everyone has migrated to this way of life (with religion being outlawed), with a hand wavy 'everyone else that disagreed died in the war'.

For how 'globe spanning' the characters and world was supposed to be it all felt like different shades of the same setting, and each character was a different shade of 'intelligent, cool, bad-ass'. It's just so detached from the reality of humans as a species that I cannot take anything the book seriously.

Its a shame because Bridger and Carlyle seemed interesting but just after they are introduced they disappear and the plot becomes much more tedious.