I had no idea what to expect with this book, but the cover was pretty, and I like the title. I've read quite a few books lately with artificial intelligence themes or central AI characters, and I think this one may be my favorite so far, at least for great AI characters. .The AIs in this story are on par with the AI ship minds in Iain M. Banks's Culture books. The plot is more international business/espionage rather than space adventures, a setting I am less used to for science fiction stories, and some of the pacing was a bit off, but the AI dialogue was great. I especially loved Botswana. It may take a few books like this one to really establish a perfect style and story structure for this sort of setting; I am sure some of my friends who would like the more staid pace of this book will be less thrilled with the AI bit, while my friends who are more excited by AI may want story structures more like the space adventures where AI is most familiar to them. But, I enjoyed this one and will be watching for more books like this one. The AI characters in this book did remind me of the ones in the new Clive Cussler novel so maybe readers will be getting quite a bit more comfortable with them in less traditional scifi settings.