Right off the bat, the story (more like a short story leading to the wider world of Trinity in the series) reminded me of Dune by Frank Herbert. I was immediately drawn in by the epic fantasy prose, but there was a tremendous amount of detail in describing a megapolis city, its details, and those within it ... and there was a point of view that kept changing from dove, to a street kid, to a crow, and so on. Although a bit difficult to get used to it was interesting to follow this changing perspective, an unusual literary technique.
Luckily, this unusual literary style settles down and shifts to simple straight forward story telling in the Trinity book of the series. Although The End of the Kai may not seem to have much to do with the story of Trinity, it does provide an understanding of what Shinsei reveals to Kieko about his father at the end of Trinity.