Incandescence is very dry, overly technical, and a lot of the physics is frankly over my head... all in all a nearly perfect book!
In this universe life in the Milky Way evolved from chemistry on eleven separate occasions. These replicators, or at least their precursors, ricocheted around the galaxy. Meteor impacts, stellar tress pas, tidal disruption, and supernova propelled shrapnel, all serving to mix and scatter life across thousands of worlds. The Amalgam is the resultant climax civilisation descended from the eleven unique Panspermia roots. The Aloof are a mysterious civilisation sitting at the bottom of the gravity-well in the chaotic bulge that surrounds the galaxy's central colossal black hole.
