Singularity Sky by Charles Stross (3 stars)

This book was just good enough to continue to the next book. There's a lot of setup to essentially deliver a space opera version of "information wants to be free":

Then along comes the Festival, which treats censorship as a malfunction and routes communications around it. The Festival won’t take no for an answer because it doesn’t have an opinion on anything; it just is.”

According to Wikipedia Stross was looking for something to symbolize a society being invaded by something they completely didn't understand. He ended up using Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for inspiration - hence "The Festival" and mimes featuring prominently...

The Mimes moved slowly, frequently fighting an invisible wind or trying to feel their way around intangible buildings, but they were remorseless. Mimes never slept, or blinked, or stopped moving.

I liked the cornucopia machines, and Rachel's escape from the court martial was particularly entertaining. Also I liked the creativity in the original singularity: that humanity was somewhat randomly just transported all over the galaxy through wormholes such that the most distant settlements were sent many centuries into the past, and thus advanced well beyond Earth's technology level.

3 stars