I hadn't liked the two books of his I read earlier so I wasn't surprised that I didn't like this one. In fact, nobody liked it. I only got a quarter through in a week and usually I finish the bookgroup book in six days at the most (I sometimes take notes).
It's set in the far future were Earth is in awful shape and some people have moved to outer places -- our folks are on Callisto. Everybody hates everybody else and lots of people die. It's as if McAuley just wanted to have fewer characters, but that didn't happen. The book had no decent people, much less good people, and that's why most of us didn't like it.
If you like that kind of ongoing hate, violence, and death, you might want to read it.