I read this based on all the glowing recommendations and I wasn't really disappointed. It started out very accessible; some of the bits I'd heard people have trouble with weren't made mysterious or anything. 
 People talk a lot about the gender thing that goes on constantly, which to me seemed no more significant than the gloves. Ok, it was making a bit more of a statement than the gloves, but it was still mostly flavor. I found the politics, the idea of a split nation, much more interesting and worth talking about, reflecting as they do the current political situation. 
 Alas, I don't have time to organize a more detailed discussion post right now, so... if you're curious, ask and I can be disorganized at you. :-) 
 It's a good book. It lags slightly in the second half, and some of the sentences are extremely convoluted and hard to follow, but both the mid-book action climax and the end-book action climax were tremendously powerful.