Some ups and downs but, overall, a good story.

"Veil" was an interesting read for me. There were aspects of it that I really enjoyed and thought were particularly well executed but there were also enough elements that I disliked or found objectively lacking that I'd slightly hesitate to broadly recommend it.

This book is rather difficult to talk about in any detail without quickly venturing into spoiler territory, as evidenced by its description, which I believe gives away far too much information about the early stages of its narrative. Thus, I'd definitely recommend only reading as much of that as necessary to get a sense of the pitch before jumping in to avoid "knowing too much" about how things will unfold for the first 30-50% of the book.

Fortunately, I think I can summarize my praise for and issues with this one in a way that avoids a similar tipping of its hand.

The good: The writing is generally very solid. It has a lot of effective atmosphere and descriptive flourishes, with only occasional excesses of detail and instances of repetition. The story flows nicely for the most part, with not much in the way of downtime or superfluous diversion despite the book's length. The characters are well fleshed out and, in the majority of cases, behave like real people, with a few mildly-annoying exceptions.

What you may not like: A lot of things that happen throughout the story really push the limits of plausibility and don't stand up well to any sort of careful thought or scrutiny. The book therefore lands firmly in the "science fantasy" category for me, where the elements of "science" and "realism" in it are more window dressing or token gestures as opposed to anything that would be genuinely believable. That's not necessarily a bad or damning thing as it often makes events more "fun" but I can almost guarantee that sticklers for "hard" science fiction will likely take issue with much of what's presented in "Veil." I also feel the book is a bit long for the sort of story it is, and occasionally went a little overboard with certain elements in ways that felt somewhat forced and heavy-handed to me.

All that said, I do think there's a lot to like and praise about "Veil" and I certainly don't have any significant regrets about my experience with it as a reader. I just ultimately wasn't as satisfied by it as I'd hoped to be. 3.75 stars for me, rounded up so as not to underrate it.