I rarely DNF books, but this one not only wasn't resonating with me, it also made me feel terrible most of the times I read it. I saw it recommended in conversations around the Area X books and Book of the New Sun, both of which are favorites, but this wasn't really doing much of what I personally enjoyed about those. Plenty of people (including Area X's author!) seemed to love it, so YMMV. 

Generally the feeling that I got during the read was intrigued, magical, mysterious, and important. The world is very interesting; the creatures, magic, and theology tie-ins are extremely well-done and developed. The characters’ personalities were all diverse, leading to a very exciting and dynamic world. However, most of the main characters were self-absorbed white men which made it hard to not compare them to the author himself. 

Perhaps because of this parallelism, or maybe as an additional cause of the parallelism, the writing sometimes comes off as arrogant or overly poetic in the sense the writer is writing just to feel genius. 

The only major annoyance, though, is the inclusion of an entire plot line (character driven) that never ties back into the other plots, never even mentioning The Vorrh, and that has no evident rippling effects, even after reading the second book in the trilogy. The only relevancy that it ever has is perhaps being set in the same time and world, and the random interaction with a human subject potentially from The Vorrh.

Perhaps it was an Erstwhile, but it was not explained in the way Erstwhile are explained in the second book. As well, female Erstwhile are never mentioned, either.