This note contains spoilers for the book.

Subtitled "A Space Opera". A standalone, so far as I can tell (though one certainly could write further stories against this background. And my favorite of Ken's books so far.

As always, what's the most outstanding is the background cultures (nearly always in the plural with MacLeod). This is in a future with post-singularity stuff going on, or at least having gone on. Actually, the ability to provide FTL may be ongoing post-singularity stuff, minds operating in the quantum interstices of the universe to protect causality.