Read 10% and gave up. Too slow, too confusing, too generic, too nowadays tech and ideas (in supposedly far future). But mainly too slow-going. ( )

after reading her Republic Commando books, I had very high hopes. Which were dashed. This is about an eco-cop that goes on a mission to another planet. Finds humans and aliens and becomes a new type of alien. The book was about paganism and earth worship. It was not a pleasure to read and I shall be sticking to her Starwars stuff from now on. ( )

This book is filled with ideological messages. On top of that it is a slow read. Nothing much happens. There is some walking around some talking and that's it!

But the worst is the ideological messages that are forced on you. No doubt the author is a fan of veganism. In the book the character Aras (the alien) say that he can't smell the meat on Shan (the female lead character) to which she replies something like "no of course not, we don't really need to eat meat some people just like it" What a sickening display of contaminating a fictional story with ideological nonsense.

And then there is the environmental thing. All life is sacred, don't pollute etc. Any sympathy you might have for this message quickly evaporates when you realize to what extreme this is being taken. It is of the same order as buddhist monks carefully sweeping the path they walk on out of fear that they might step on an ant.

There seems to be a lot of self hatred in the book as well. Reading the book you might come away thinking all humans are bad and humanity an evil plague. Again a nice scene from the book, Aras says something like "you consider these rats vermin" to which Shan replies "the only vermin I know walk on two legs". Nice!

So on conclusion, not recommended unless you are a hippie vegan green loving environmentalist. If you happen to be one than you'll probably come away thinking this book is awesome. ( )

A thoroughly enjoyable read doing what science fiction does at its best - exploring ideas with a minimum of bang bang. The focus here broadly is human nature. Can our essential nature morph in isolation? The nature-nurture debate revisited. While much of the story deals at the species or small group level, there is focus as well with the individual in here, on how identity evolves in response to environmental and genetic change. Fascinating stuff. Well written. Compassionate. ( )

This isn't a great book. There are a lot of awkwardly constructed sentences, and it takes about 75 pages to get started.

However, there are some unusual elements that I found it worth reading. The hottie alien is from a matriarchal culture so he's really into our badass, eco-cop protagonist woman because she reminds him of his alien leader-females. Men attracted to dominant women because they're dominant is a pretty rare thing in fiction and worth praise. It's the kind of "expanding our conceptions of gender" thing that wins James Tiptree awards.

Really though, some of the reviews of this book demonstrate how conservative and narrow minded scifi is as a genre. Stories set in space in particular. I mean, sure the audience for Halo books (Traviss' day job is writing Halo and Star Wars adaptation novels) is pretty lowest common denominator, but hard scifi is such bro territory it's hard to take sometimes. ( )