A Dyson sphere with a humanly breathable atmosphere, especially one that has been at least partly colonized from Earth, is a perfect setting for discovering new civilizations by airship instead of by spaceship. Kind of a Trek without the Stars. Given historically recent transplantations of people from Earth, the language barrier can plausibly be as big or as little as the author decides. This particular sphere is in 1 AU orbital distance not from a star but from some kind of light- and heat-emitting artifact.
A series with such a setting could be extended indefinitely perhaps with the newly discovered civilizations becoming progressively more alien and incomprehensible. However, as it stands, this novel completes a trilogy with the previous volumes set on Venus and Mars, respectively.
Bob Shaw's Orbitsville, an earlier fictional Dyson sphere, was created by transforming stellar energy at 1 AU distance from the primary into matter. How did the Lords of Creation do it? The only rule here is: expect the unexpected.
The Fransay and Britannians are in conflict although they cannot know anything of resentments arising from World War II back on the Round World!
The ending will be unexpected but will then seem to have been inevitable.
The sphere is an obvious setting for an anthology of original stories and Poul Anderson would have been able to create a story fitting perfectly into the Lords Of Creation background.
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