I enjoyed this book a lot. It's slow moving at times with the author taking his time with conversations and descriptions of them. The premise is very interesting, but I'm sad that it wasn't elaborated more deeply - e.g. the history and development of the clakker technology with Huygens and how Spinoza comes into the picture. Maybe the author saves it for the next two parts of the book.
Language can be intimidating at first for non-native english speakers - author uses wide range of vocabulary. Fortunately it gets better after a while as reader adjusts.