Storyline: 2/5 
 Characters: 3/5 
 Writing Style: 3/5 
 World: 3/5 
 Ideas: I'm not actually a fan of the gritty-psychedelic-transhuman-dystopian sub-genre to which this belongs, but the first in the series, Blindsight, dealt with some fun and intriguing philosophical and scientific ideas, making it worthwhile. I wasn't persuaded by every idea or explanation in the first book, and that was true here in the second as well. In Echopraxia, I particularly enjoyed the discussions on the limitations of science. I found Watts's conception and presentation of faith, however, to be as shallow as the insights to science were deep. I had thought, somewhere in the middle, that free will was going to be to Echopraxia what consciousness was to Blindsight, but it simply disappeared somewhere near the end and was left unresolved and half-articulated. 
 Plot: One of the weakness of Blindsight - not knowing when to quit adding in ideas - was exacerbated here. We not only have a future in which there are vampires, ghosts, zombies, widespread DNA-changing weapons, revolutions, factional wars, space ships, aliens, consciousness-storage, and antimatter; we also have a plot full of characters, factions, species, alliances, and goals which are complicated and convoluted. Now add in a biologists argot and repeated dialogues over philosophy you've got a description of Echopraxia. There is a reason that scientists limit the number dependent, independent, and control variables in an experiment: to make the findings comprehensible (leave considerations of validity aside for the time being). Watts's Echopraxia keeps throwing more into the operation. One could partially overcome this in Blindsight because the plot was simple. This limited the number of simultaneous moving parts by about a third. Echopraxia, however, has a host of plot twists, turns, and reveals that are related in various (but only hinted at) ways with many of the other ideas. It turned what could have been an intricate pattern with vivid colors into a brown Rorschach blot (which, admittedly, can still be kind of cool). 
 Clarity: Make what's happening clear, man! That scene with Valerie and the glasses - I still have no idea what was happening there or what exactly she did. The postscript - I read it over three times at the end, and I still don't understand what is being described (view spoiler)[ Three interpretations: 1) Bruks removes a bit of Portia from himself and puts it into Valerie's corpse, and they both walk off into the sunset. 2) Bruks takes a bit of Portia from Valerie and puts into himself and carries the corpse along with him. 3) Bruks repairs himself with some bits of vampire DNA from Valerie, and walks off into the sunset alone. (hide spoiler)]. And this is the ending! This happened somewhere between a dozen and a hundred times across the book. Being vague and open-ended is one matter; being unclear is another. I can grapple with, ponder, and appreciate vagueness, but I can't get to the grappling, pondering, or appreciating when it is unclear. I can make very different interpretations fit the final chapter, and they change how I perceive events that led up to it. You nearly ruined the book for lack of clarity, Come on Watts! 
 Recommendations: This is not a stand-alone work. Too much background on both vampires and heaven is missing. Even though I read Blindsight not so long ago, I found that I couldn't recall important details to make sense of happenings in this book. I loathe to reread a book just to prepare for the sequel, but it would have helped for Echopraxia. Also, do read the book if you liked Blindsight. It isn't as good, but it doesn't spoil the Theseus experience and much of what you liked is going to be here as well.