I generally am not a big fan of so-called "hard" SF. Hard usually means hard science geekery, poorly developed characters, and wooden writing.

Egan writes about hard science geekery, usually some combination of math and physics, but he does manage to create decent characters, so I've been reading his novels. I just started this one, and so far it seems interesting though not intensely compelling yet. I'm hoping it picks up more as I go along.