Living next door to the god of love Book

A lot of science fiction authors indulge in what's called "world building", imagining vast, complex new realities in which to set their stories. The problem is that the reader is not necessarily familiar with this new world, leaving the author with two options: familiarise the reader with the rules via authorial "info-dumps" - bite-sized lectures on history, sociology, science, or whatever else is necessary; or try and work all this information into inevitably clumsy expository dialogue.
Justina Robson has found a third way: don't explain anything, and hope that the reader can somehow figure it out for himself. Terms like "Forged", "Stuffies" "Sidebar Universes" and "Unity" are thrown around with little or no context or explanation. This isn't just futuristic window-dressing either - these concepts are central to the plot, so if you don't get it, the whole book may as well be written in Esperanto.
Or so I thought. Imagine my surprise then when I searched goodreads for reviews of her previous book Natural History, only to learn that that book details a lot of the events alluded to in this one, and that if I'd read Natural History I'd doubtless have had a far easier time with "Living Next Door to the God of Love". Yet nothing on the book cover or in the reviews I'd read indicated that it was a sequel or that I'd need to read the earlier book if I expected to understand ONE WORD of this one.

Robson obviously has affection for her characters, who she brings vividly and memorably to life, and there are many powerful scenes. But as for what they're up to, or why...sorry, I've no idea.