4) The Phoenix Exultant, by John C. Wright

I read the first in this series, The Golden Age some time ago and quite enjoyed it. This second volume is also enjoyable – still the same dense writing, but our hero turns out to be pretty fallible on a human level and appears to learn and change as the book goes on, and Wright appears to be questioning the underside of his affluent networked society. Indeed at one point I almost hoped the book was going to turn into a series of vignettes of different groups functioning on the margins, but it turned out a bit different. Anyway, it was fun.