Very opaque prose and narration, especially blindsight, but once you get used to what watts is doing, the story itself is extremely compelling.

It is hard science fiction, about as hard as granite, but it's still fun If you can survive all the perspective-driven jargon.

The story itself and the characters are comprehensively created; there's a lot of positives to both books, although I preferred blindsight.

They're independent, sharing a world of sorts and related but with a completely different set of characters and do not at all need to be read in order or as an original and its sequel.

I recommend diving into blindsight.