As much as I like Delany, I have trouble getting fully involved in the narrative voice in his later works--reading this one, I was absorbed but not involved--there's just that slight knowing hint of artifice. In that respect I think his earlier works are a lot easier to get into and just to simply enjoy. I think Nova and Babel-17 are the two books where he comes closest to balancing the intellectual and the entertaining, though both books are featherweights compared to the stuff he wrote in the 70s and 80s.