Oof, what a SLOG. I'm very grateful to my book group for explaining to me the finer points of historical accuracy (Kennedy assassination references, for example), and the symbolic  past/present/future alignments of Katin/Mouse/Lorq, but I must say I remain utterly baffled as to why Jo Walton loves this book so much. The characters expressed their personality through speechifying; the world-building felt indicative rather than fully realized; the main antagonist had absolutely no reason for being a dick except that he's a complete psychopath--which, honestly, would have made a lot more sense than his speech about why the antagonism is personal. The insistence that Tarot is a perfectly rational way of having a conversatino with the universe, actually, and only backwards superstitious losers think it's nonsense, seemed almost like Delaney was making a joke, except that there's so little else about this book that's funny that I think maybe he actually subscribes to the Philip K Dickian school of 'let's write MYSTICAL science fiction!' None of it was convincing. Even the main plot arc, which is about obtaining some unobtanium from the center of a freaking NOVA, took a galaxy-changing quest that would affect the fundamental balance of power between workers and owners and star systems and migrants--a conversation that the book is interested in having--welded onto it a personal character motivation that was so puny and unconvincing compared to the actual scope of the real goal of the main team that its inclusion in the book just trivialized all of it. Not least because the character work was lousy and I didn't care about any of them anyway.