'on the steel breeze' kicks in about halfway through, yes it's rather brilliant, suddenly i understood what he was trying to do, three clones on three separate adventures suddenly linked in thought and memory, sharing a mission that may destroy them as they each play their part in a galactic mystery. the narratives suddenly came together in a focal point, just as i was about to give up on the story. 
reynolds plays a great weaving game with his readers, he takes them off on a tangents and detours through a world so very far removed from our own, a possible future but something almost impossible to fathom. he takes his characters and disposes of them here and there, resurrects them, makes them multiple, evolves them, the background is almost a character as well, the landscapes of mars, saturns moons, the earth all central to his story and the geography of the holoships, vast environments travelling through space towards the planet crucible, unable to slow down until the solution of a mathematical problem is found. 
meanwhile the characters all suffer the politics of various factions and power brokers, and the strangely protective mechanism, a computer surveillance construct that stops humans committing violence seems to have an agenda of it's own but the big mystery is who or what exactly is arachane?