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Up to about halfway through, I was in love with this book, but then Hackworth goes to the Drummers and we skip 10 years, and my thoughts are like this: if you as a writer didn't care about those 10 years enough to write about them, why do I care enough to read them? Worse, science fiction is already more concerned with the ideas than the characters, but when the writer is consciously trying to mimic the further-removed-from-reality discourses of Victorian-era writing, we wind up so distanced from character that honestly? I powered through the last 100 pages more out of feeling of obligation than honest interest in the novel. Then there's the ending. The last 50 pages or so make zero sense given the rest of the novel, and the ending itself seems more like just a stop rather than an ending.
So, if you're considering this novel because you loved "Snow Crash" (which was mindblowingly good), skip it, instead. The last 250 pages don't deliver on the fantastic promise that the first 250 showed.