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An uneven book where the story feels too small for the world it inhabits. The technological aspects and the descriptions of a spaceship travelling through the sun's photosphere were the best parts. The characters were somewhat flat, and the story devolved into a kind of half-baked Scooby Doo mystery.
The scale of the book is somewhat space-opera-y with a universe teeming with multiple alien species arranged in an extremely old and complex hierarchy. Evolved species have developed the ability to evolve non-sentient species into sentient species, creating a web of patron-client relationships stretching back two billion years to the Progenitors. Relative status is based on a species' evolutionary lineage. Earth is newly initiated into this group as a bit of an outlier, as they are one of a very few known species to have possibly achieved sentience without the help of a patron. They have to carefully balance the benefits of access to amazing technological advances with the threat of becoming overly dependent on or controlled by alien cultures. This is complicated by competing social factions that either completely revere alien societies and believe that Earth's alien patron is as yet unknown or believe that Earth achieved sentience alone and generally eschew alien technology or interference.
Earth has had a number of global shakeups, with the former government system, known as the "Bureaucracy" being overthrown in favor of the new "Confederacy." It's honestly not all that clear what the differences between these two governments are, as the most controversial aspect of the former, a system of identifying and restricting the rights and movement of potentially violent or deviant citizens, was carried over into the latter.
If the contents of the last two paragraphs had been more important to the plot of the novel, I would have been much happier. Instead, it served largely as backdrop for a rather simple space adventure/mystery. Some of the characters were interesting, particularly Kanten Fagin, but overall I found their interactions to be frustratingly simple. There was also a frustrating amount of sexual objectification regarding Jacob's interaction with Helene. The romantic subplot between the two had me groaning and rolling my eyes more than once.
The sequel to this book won pretty much every major SF award, so I guess I will give it a try. But it's going to need to a whole lot better than this book, or I might have to permanently sideline Brin from my reading list.
The scale of the book is somewhat space-opera-y with a universe teeming with multiple alien species arranged in an extremely old and complex hierarchy. Evolved species have developed the ability to evolve non-sentient species into sentient species, creating a web of patron-client relationships stretching back two billion years to the Progenitors. Relative status is based on a species' evolutionary lineage. Earth is newly initiated into this group as a bit of an outlier, as they are one of a very few known species to have possibly achieved sentience without the help of a patron. They have to carefully balance the benefits of access to amazing technological advances with the threat of becoming overly dependent on or controlled by alien cultures. This is complicated by competing social factions that either completely revere alien societies and believe that Earth's alien patron is as yet unknown or believe that Earth achieved sentience alone and generally eschew alien technology or interference.
Earth has had a number of global shakeups, with the former government system, known as the "Bureaucracy" being overthrown in favor of the new "Confederacy." It's honestly not all that clear what the differences between these two governments are, as the most controversial aspect of the former, a system of identifying and restricting the rights and movement of potentially violent or deviant citizens, was carried over into the latter.
If the contents of the last two paragraphs had been more important to the plot of the novel, I would have been much happier. Instead, it served largely as backdrop for a rather simple space adventure/mystery. Some of the characters were interesting, particularly Kanten Fagin, but overall I found their interactions to be frustratingly simple.
Spoiler
Especially disappointing was the main characters "split personality" disorder, which largely seemed to serve as a convenient plot device to allow him to perform needed actions. It became even more disappointing at the end when it was posited that, hey, maybe he didn't have a split personality after all, just an overactive imagination(!)The sequel to this book won pretty much every major SF award, so I guess I will give it a try. But it's going to need to a whole lot better than this book, or I might have to permanently sideline Brin from my reading list.