Mixed feelings, and I’ll say up front the Mars trilogy set a bar this one doesn’t clear. The worldbuilding is still Robinson at his best, a genuinely plausible tour of what humanity might actually do with the solar system given a few centuries and some tinkering, terrariums hollowed out of asteroids, cities that migrate to stay out of the sun on Mercury, all of it grounded in real science instead of hand-waved. That part earns every bit of the reputation this book has.
Where it loses me is Swan. I wanted to care about her and the political conspiracy that pulls her across half the solar system, and for long stretches I just didn’t, the plot takes its time developing and I took even longer to start caring what happened to anyone in it. Made it about two-thirds through on the strength of the setting alone before the story finally gave me a reason to keep turning pages for its own sake.
The ideas are better than the writing here, and I don’t think that’s a controversial take, I’ve seen the same complaint from readers who otherwise love Robinson. As a tour of possible futures for the species this is fantastic, aspirational in a way a lot of hard SF isn’t anymore. As a novel, with characters you’re supposed to feel something about, it’s thinner than the concepts holding it up deserve.
Worth reading for the worldbuilding alone if you’re the kind of reader who can sit with minutiae for its own sake. If you need to care about the people first, this one might test your patience the way it tested mine.