Just finished tonight. So, review and big spoilers follow.
Review:
Enjoyable book, then again I enjoyed Empyrean Age if not as much, so ymmv. Lots of interesting PF, and lots of stuff that people way more intelligent then I will be able to pick apart. Like Empyrean age there are a few things that stick out in the text, at least we don't have to deal with Caldarian bullshit any more but instead we are stuck with the Joves instead of the Jove.
Crew of the Retford is back from Empyrean Age as important characters in various ways, coincidence stretching credulity to bring them back together again to affect the fate of the Empires. Still was fun read.
Spoilers follow, interpreted by my limited understanding of them, some of the stuff was hard for me to understand on the first read through. These aren't in any particular order, just writing them as I remember.
[spoiler]
1. CONCORD inner circle believe the Jove to be gone completely now. The Jovian disease has wiped them all out or something.
2. The sleeepers are a break off of the Jove sometime after the Second Empire Started and the Jovian disease first was entered. They are still alive, and indeed just asleep.
3. The Enhunnadi(or whatevers) are apparently not the bad guys. Or they are. I'm not quite sure on that. When the Jove first came to New Eden they were on 7 motherships and the worst off of the New Eden colonists. They were all plugged into the motherships matrix style in something called the Construct, while the Enhunnadi were the ship crew ordered to protect and help reintegrate the Jove into real life when the journey was over. The Architects designed the virtual construct the Jove were plugged into. If you want more, read the book, because its way to complicated to try to explain.
4. The OTHER that is sharing bodies with Jamyl is a sleeper intelligence that is the only of it's kind to be created purely digital, without an actual body and or soul. All other sleepers were supposedly actually born and then plugged in.
5. The broker is probably dead, but people are still searching for him.
6. The Khanid specialize in memory manipulation to the point of where they can remove memories but leave the skills or things learned intact.
7. Roden Shipyards was helped with Serpentis funding, but eventually he broke free of it before it became larger then a regional corporation.
8. Mordu is insane to one degree or another.
9. Roden has both Roden Shipyards and Fed intelligence competing against each other to a degree. Roden Shipyards seems to be better.
10. Sleepers have a 5th lobe bioenginered into their brain that allows with implants to do the quick cloning.
11. The Amarr under Jamyl raided a sleeper complex found a bunch of asleep sleepers, raided them and lobotomized the implants.
12. The dust soldier prototypes called Templars were bio engineered to have the 5th lobe and had the sleeper implant installed.
13. This somehow trapped the original sleeper in the soldier torturing the sleeper(which is what the other wanted) all the while gave the other power over them in some way.
14. Jamyl never had telepathy in the magic sense, all in her and Falak's inner circle had a quantum entanglement device implanted against their knowledge, like the FTL comms, thus allowing her reading and broadcasting of certain thoughts.
15. CONCORD may have DUST style operatives before the Amarr did. Big question on this, they were termed THANATOS units and are used for black ops, or they may be something like the Broker.
16. Ishukone Watch, Mordu's Legion, and Roden are all working together to produce the first batch of Dust Soldiers that are retro engineered from sleeper tech, and do not use actual sleeper implants, which is something the Other did not want, as he can't control them. It is unknown whether future Amarr dust soldiers will be from that tech, or from sleeper implants directly.
17. The Minmatar elders apparently want to leave New Eden, and are apparently directing resources to the "Skymother" project instead of putting anything but the bare minimum to maintain the front against the Amarr.
18. While the capsuleer militia's do fight the majority of battles it seems that the Empire Navies do fight directly as well, and ground fighting between the Empires in low sec systems was common.
19. A major clash between the Empires just occurred in the Ammake system over Planet II, involving over 140 Amarr Empire ships(including a titan piloted by the Grand Admiral of the Amarr Navy) vs an unknown number of Minmatar ships(supported by a Hel), vs an unknown number of an alliance of convenience consisting of Gallente Federation(led by a Nyx piloted by an Admiral), Mordu's Legion(led by Mordu himself in a Wyvern) and Ishukone Watch(16 Wyverns, one being piloted by Mens Repolla). The end results and goals of this skirmish are being hushed hushed by Shakor and Roden. Heth apologized to the Amarr for Ishukone Watch firing on Amarr ships. Ishukone seems willing to go to civil war with Heth.