Egan is always dense. It's some mind bending physics/comp sci, but all cooked up in his brain so doesn't really apply to anything productive. I struggled with his books and his writing but toughened it out because I liked the concepts, but he's divisive.

The beginning describes the formation of an intelligence and it is indeed very dense. You can figure out what's going on but it takes some slow reading, and probably best to revisit it once you have some more context from later in the book.

The whole book isn't like that. Once you get past that part, as the other commenter said, it gets much easier.

lol, that was exactly my thought.

The whole birth of an virtual identity part is so dense, I didn't understand half of what was "explained".

However, after that it becomes a much easier read.

Not much additional explanation, but I think, it's not really needed to enjoy the rest of the book.