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Not nearly as bad I remembered. Perhaps it aged well. Perhaps it did better with an aged reader. Perhaps having not re-read the later books in recent in memory, I didn't have better books to compare it to. I did remember that we never hear the story of the Vanilla Needle and other off book details were never written. I think it also helps to already know about the galactic civilization and the dolphins and the chimps and client races and so forth. So perhaps it's just a not very good book 1. And yes stylistically it's a little clunky. But good and interesting and worth reading.