So first the good: I thought this book was well written; the author clearly thought about what he wanted to say, keeps his vocab and metaphors on point and put real work into creating characters with their own world view and interpretation.

But it suffers from tropism. There's the spooky girl that no-one pays attention to. There's the operator who wonders if there might be something more to the machines that no-one understands. There's the power hungry administrator... and there's the government conspiracy. Everything happens about as you'd expect, and the characters go through the appropriate drama at the appropriate times. People previously established as geniuses engage in mad dashes into the hearts of madness armed with a rusty knife and no plan.

I'm not saying this is science fiction by the numbers, but I think I saw this in a Stargate SG:1 episode.