"Rommel you magnificent bastard..."

After finishing this book, I was impressed by four of the characters that drove the story. Seng, Gibbons, Lake, and Akkarat. These men were, by this definition, magnificent bastards, men who played the odds and made major power plays. The most interesting, I think, is Gibbons. He not only switched sides at some point before the story, because he was bored, he managed to be the one in the end who got everything he wanted, well except a cure for those man-killing super zits. Any one else think differently? While on the subject of bastards, what about Gendo? What did you guys think of him?