It's beautifully written on a sentence level, but as storytelling I don't think it quite works. Some of the author's choices get in the way of becoming invested in the story (I was taken out of the story very suddenly the first time a character in a difficult situation turned out to be a deity playing a role, and that happened several times), and some of them come across more as the author's preoccupations getting an airing than as natural parts of the narrative. (The bits where the characters talk about humanity's future and are clearly commenting on the author's present don't work for me nearly as well as they apparently did for the person who wrote the foreword.) 

I already own copies of the complete tetralogy, so I might try the second book since it's there, but if this was the only one I had I wouldn't be motivated to seek any of the others out.