I may simply be too far from my juvenile sci-fi stage to appreciate this. I enjoyed it well enough to read it through but only because it was a quick read.
I find the real story of evolution to be a lot more fascinating than Clarke's imagined story. Novels need to reflect something on the human experience but I didn't really get any of that here. It just offers a wholly fantastic image of where the human race came from and where it is going.
The story didn't seem terribly coherent either. The episodes don't really seem to relate that much to eachother. The Hal part was anti-climactic especially for having seen the movie.
I didn't find the writing all that palatable either.