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A review by frakalot
Fossil Hunter by Robert J. Sawyer
4.0
We start off with an idealised picture of the Quintaglio society after the dramatic turn of events at the end of the first book but the situation is soon at risk as the Emperor's right to rule is challenged and a murder mystery gets under way.
One of Afsan's sons largely takes up the role of naturalist in this book, leaving Afsan himself to act simultaneously as an advisor to his friend the Emperor and as the lead detective in the murder case.
We also finally learn about how the Quintaglios got to their moon through snippets called the "Watcher's musings". The next paragraph is slightly spoilery but not very, I'll briefly discuss the revealed motivation for the relocation which is given very early in this book and not the only thing we learn about the Watcher.
It turns out that a sort of ascended being searched the universe for life and on stumbling across earth ~65 mya, our intergalactic do-gooder decided to preserve lifeforms with proteins based on D-amino acids because the L-amino acid lifeforms were becoming dominant. This is great, but probably not the neatest explanation since dinos were most likely also of the L-amino acid variety. I'm not an expert or an author but.... I would have had Cretaceous Noah observe the trajectory of the catastrophic asteroid as the motivation to preserve dinosaurs.
There's a parallel drawn between the newly learned theory of evolution and the Quintaglios' own practice of selecting the strongest individual from each clutch which is in its simple way satisfying.
The course of events follows a largely predictable route and for the sake of telling the story great leaps of discovery are made by simple inference but on the whole this has been a fun adventure, with the final chapter (book 3) looking to be a grander adventure still for the Quintaglios.
One of Afsan's sons largely takes up the role of naturalist in this book, leaving Afsan himself to act simultaneously as an advisor to his friend the Emperor and as the lead detective in the murder case.
We also finally learn about how the Quintaglios got to their moon through snippets called the "Watcher's musings". The next paragraph is slightly spoilery but not very, I'll briefly discuss the revealed motivation for the relocation which is given very early in this book and not the only thing we learn about the Watcher.
It turns out that a sort of ascended being searched the universe for life and on stumbling across earth ~65 mya, our intergalactic do-gooder decided to preserve lifeforms with proteins based on D-amino acids because the L-amino acid lifeforms were becoming dominant. This is great, but probably not the neatest explanation since dinos were most likely also of the L-amino acid variety. I'm not an expert or an author but.... I would have had Cretaceous Noah observe the trajectory of the catastrophic asteroid as the motivation to preserve dinosaurs.
There's a parallel drawn between the newly learned theory of evolution and the Quintaglios' own practice of selecting the strongest individual from each clutch which is in its simple way satisfying.
The course of events follows a largely predictable route and for the sake of telling the story great leaps of discovery are made by simple inference but on the whole this has been a fun adventure, with the final chapter (book 3) looking to be a grander adventure still for the Quintaglios.