Reading progress update: I've read 74 out of 192 pages.
I'm roughly a third of the way into the book, and the best description of my experience with it is "annoyance." In an afterword Priest calls the stories which served as the origin for this book "willfully obscure science fiction" and it really does describe this almost surreal plot. It's not uninteresting and it's proving a quick read, but at this point I feel as though I'm reading it just for the resolution of what has so far been a pretty cryptic story.