Somehow I found myself totally gripped by the profusion of narrators. The clay thing is a very old, almost biblical force, and yet the world is painted with a very real, Graham-Storrs-like postmodern future, with a great licensed PI voice and a superb noir feel to the whole thing. There's a lot going on, and it's easy to lose your thread if you're not concentrating I'd imagine, but if you can stay the course this is an exciting, clever, and compelling story.