A lot of people seem to love this book, so let me tell you what I didn't like.

First of all, the grand secret that the entire book is based around is never explained and never seemed particularly interesting to me. I understand that this is the second in a trilogy of loosely connected books, but come on. That being said, Brin does give a pretty good reason why keeping the secret a secret is important.

Second, everybody's characters are a little bit too simplistic. Charles Dart, a chimp paleontologist, is an egotistical scientist too focused on his own work to care for other people. Creideki, the dolphin captain, is a noble beast. Toshio, a young human male, is an impetuous but sentimental adolescent. And so on. I'm not asking for Dostoevsky here (or even for Iain Banks) but it was hard for me to sympathize with characters who felt more like collections of attributes than real people.

Third, Brin is afraid to pull out all the stops. He will set up what you think is sure disaster, and then somehow everything will turn out all right. **(minor) SPOILER ALERT** At one point, for example, Charles Dart sets up an atomic bomb for an experiment. Unbeknownst to him, the bomb will hurt somebody whom the other members of the crew care for quite deeply. Sure enough, the bomb goes enough. And nothing of consequence happens. WTF? (P.S. Just about everybody of consequence survives to the end of the book.)

Fourth, the alien chapters--which describe what is happening in space while the dolphins, humans, and chimp are stranded on a planet--are dumb.

Now, to what I liked. (After all, I gave this book a 6, not a 4.)

The idea of "uplift" is pretty interesting. Basically, Brin proposes that every species in the universe only achieved space-faring intelligence with the aid of some more intelligent species. However, according to Galactic Code, the uplifted species is then made something of a servant to the parent species for a period of some hundred thousand years. Brin builds up an entire Galactic mythos over this, with man playing a key (but not overwhelming) role in it. This is a great sci-fi idea.

Brin is also surprisingly good at describing how much one person loves another. The relationship between Tom and Gillian Orley, two of the humans aboard the grounded starship, is genuinely affecting; it also provides a much-needed jolt of drama in the last half of the book.

The plot of the book is not half bad. Things move along at a fair clip, and Brin is adept at switching between different characters' points of view in a way that leaves the reader hanging in suspense. Also, except for Brin's squeamishness at making any of his characters' actions have any serious consequences, there are relatively few out-of-the-blue moments in the narrative that make you scratch your head and say, "Huh?"

Overall, this is a light, frothy book: a fun read, but not very memorable.

Copyright © 2001 Steven Wu