This note contains spoilers for the book.

New author for me. This was interesting. It involved first contact with four alien species and a human lost colony under one of them, plus some interesting glimpses of life on earth in that future (looks like a projection of our future, unfavorable type).

Somehow it managed to be amazingly flat. I liked several characters well enough, including Shan Franklin and the alien Aras, but somehow the plot never developed any momentum, despite the momentous events taking place (and the ambiguous and inconclusive ending). Partly this is because it's told with a very tight focus on the people out at the colony, and there just aren't very many of them.

Still, there's definite good things here, and no reason to take against the author.