My sample of old science fiction I've actually read is still quite small (to my recollection this and Childhood's End are it), but I'm starting to really appreciate the genre. There's just something appealing about the lack of character focus. Sure, the characters are there and doing things. And they're generally not half bad (although most of what makes them interesting comes from them being some kind of cool alien, a vehicle to show the weird ways this world works - or, in the case of our protagonist, a Mary Sue whose Mary Sue abilities to be very good at everything keep pushing the plot along). It might just be as contrast to the books I've been reading recently, which even in fantasy have been character-first, emotions-forward, and internal monologue-heavy, but I found the characters taking second place to an engaging and wildly creative plot to be refreshing. This whole story has a delightful feeling of being a small story in a much bigger world - sure, there's a lot happening here, but there's also so much hinted at that implies the world is bigger than this handful of characters and the problem(s) they're trying to solve. And the actual plot that is the focus of the book is wonderfully complex, intellectually challenging for both the characters and for me as a reader, and above all wildly creative and unique. (Read: Extremely weird, which is something I generally appreciate in a book.) I'll admit, I really didn't understand why certain aspects or elements were important at times or how they fit into the questions the characters were trying to answer. Frank really leans into the "let the reader figure it out through context clues as they keep reading" style of explaining this weird and wonderful far-future sci-fi world, and either I missed some clues or there actually weren't enough of them because I finished the book still not really understanding several things. But not in a frustrating way - in a way that made me want to read a sequel or two. There actually is a prequel novelette and a second novel in the series, although it's really hard to tell from the descriptions whether they feature any of the same characters or are just set in the same world. But even though I don't know if they will actually answer any of my questions, I'm sure they'll be enjoyable reads.