It did take a bit for me to get into the book... his method of writing conversation mirrors the way people really talk, rather than what is easy and read took some getting use to. Eventually I was able to relax into the flow of it -- it also helped when the emphasis was removed on the fact that they were not really speaking english. In any case, I did enjoy the book quite a lot. It reminded me in some ways of the Robot stories by Asimov, in that there were times when the characters could not see past their own cultural foibles. Also - there was some direct ideas from Jack Vance's Dying Earth that I would be very surprised if Mieville was unaware of. Certainly someone must have asked him about that in an interview somewhere. I'll have to look.

I expect from the way it ended that there will be more mysteries to be read and as he did not answer all the questions about the physics of the relics, that that will be something to look forward to.