Three stars, almost four. (Terrible title, though: ignore the title, read the synopsis & reviews.)

This was a pretty absorbing/engaging read, and the setting was very rich. There's the overall culture on earth, the splintering of the nations the amalgamation of the corporations the major & minor religions*; the technology, orbital mechanics, and social culture of the space stations; the culture of the acting troupes (mainly Stanislaus Troupe but others as well); the culture of the faith-healing compound.

((*Pro tip: if you're describing the state of global Christian religions, don't forget the Orthodox East!))

Then there's the personal relationship dynamics: within and around Stanislaus Troupe; within the faith-healing family; among the corp-religion handlers. And all the political and personal intrigue.

Then there are the deeply explored themes of embodiment, life, death, living, dying, and killing; with interlocking themes of love, loyalty, and betrayal. This is really what the book is about. Is living as a brain in a box really living? If you want to die, should you be forced to go on living? How do parents, children, spouses, siblings love each other? When does love turn to something else? How many forms of betrayal are there?

Really, this was a very good book. Only two things kept me from giving it four stars:
1) one of the main characters, Glynn, spends too much time being too whiny for me -- not that this was unrealistic for a 15yo boy in his situation, just that it got on my nerves.
2) one of the characters has an extremely idiosyncratic speech pattern that is as much or more about playing with sounds and repetition as it is about conveying meaning. (Greeno does something very similar with the speech of the ghatti in her other books (starting with [b:Finders-Seekers|591805|Finders-Seekers (Ghatti's Tale, #1)|Gayle Greeno|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348358486s/591805.jpg|578550]). It's a very recognizable quirk, and if the character had remained marginal with relatively infrequent dialogue, I would have appreciated it. But she became a sufficiently significant character that talks a lot, and again, it just got on my nerves.

I was especially intrigued by the Little Sisters of Mortality, a Nuevo Catholic religious order of assassins.

Some of the exposition in the beginning was a bit clunky, but it wasn't too bad, and sometimes was slightly clever.

I liked Greeno's ghatti books, but they have a fairly standard fantasy feel. This book was stronger. I think she writes better SF than fantasy, and I'd like to see her write more of it.

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