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This was not the nautical adventure I was expecting. Much more philosophy than sailing. It pits a tyrannical sea captain with materialist views against an idealist scholar, convinced of man's finer nature.

The best SF takes a supposition about the world ("What would happen if...?") and follows it to interesting conclusions. McDonell's setting holds together well, with a lot of details that seem like "obvious" extrapolations of present trends into the future, but she throws in some "aha!" moments as well. Just when you think you know who a character is, you discover they're not what you think... but when you consider it, who they really are follows perfectly from the setup. The pleasure of seeing interesting ideas fit together well combines with well-paced drama and relatable characters to make this a fun read.

This book gets an extra star for being darker than I expected. I appreciated the moral and emotional ambiguity, even if the characters were kind of annoying, and the plot was a little weak. I also liked how the actions of the main character through a large portion of the book don't really matter. The war doesn't turn on a last-ditch mission.

This interleaves scenes from San Francisco just after the first Dotcom boom with episodes from the main character's childhood as a geek. Does a good job of capturing the feeling of both.