After reading your comment, I visited a synopsis of Echopraxia, because, I realized, I could remember almost nothing of it -- only a few snapshots of a space station and vampiric predation. Turns out it left almost no imprint on my brain. Blindsight is, I agree, much tighter (and thus, for me apparently, more memorable). Looking back on Echopraxia, I wonder whether it suffers, as Children of Time*, I think, does, from trying too hard to expand its established universe.

The god virus really is a fun idea -- more of Watts' one-man war on the tree of life (not only is God not at the top some metaphysical/ontological hierarchy; it's at the very bottom) -- but, in retrospect, I think you're right that it's not as well developed as it could have been or maybe needed to be.