I prefer my magic systems a bit more defined and my sci-fi to have lots of hand-waving, this felt like the inverse of both and just didn't work for me. The world-building is fairly detailed in terms of the systems and bureaucracy around the characters, in a style which draws connections to their history (our present) as touchstones. There are a lot of visual details of actions and descriptions which give a sense of setting and specific body language, leaving room for the reader to infer emotions of secondary characters (and occasionally the main character). It's a combination of narrative styles that I've encountered before and which rarely work for me, it didn't fit in this case, so I'm stopping.