It's been a while since I got hit straight with a "WTF did I just read?" but Basu absolutely manages. Every scene in this book is gloriously drawn from the big analysis of how normal life would look on a overheated planet under constant surveillance to the ways that people just...peop.
It never quite came together for me the way I wished it would and I think some of that is that I want my stories to feel more like endings than beginnings and some of that is the absolute Snow Crash of an ending (I nearly called it a Diamond Age, but it's not THAT bad).