This note contains spoilers for the book.

Darkish military space adventure. With a weird layer of keystone-cops caricature of the League of Earth Nations diplomats that is annoyingly reminiscent of right-wing ideation.

There's a weird atmosphere to this thing, fatalistic, aimed at death. And a weird background detail about the Roman empire surviving a few extra thousand years in hiding and suddenly coming to the surface and emigrating off Earth as soon as there was somewhere else for them to go (Palatine). One of them is a heavily enhanced "Patterner" in this story, but we don't get much background or much definition of what that means.

And there are hints at time-travel technology. And I hear a reliable rumor that a "make this not have happened" actually takes place. I may bail now, before I become totally infuriated.

Yeah, I have now officially given up on finishing this.