I'd heard a lot of good things about this book, but being a scifi about...diplomatic relations and such, I still mostly expected it to earn my respect for being well written, but maybe not my enjoyment.

As it turns out, while it indeed didn't grip me quite as much as it would have if it had been more my style, I still quite liked it. It's very much driven by the character interactions, which were...nicely nuanced (sometimes to the point where I wasn't sure if I was understanding correctly what was going on, but not too often, thankfully). And for a book driven by character interactions it was still nicely paced, tense, and even had some more action-ish/harrowing bits in it as well. The romance aspect of it didn't have nearly as much...warm and fluffy feelings as one usually sees, which I was on one hand I was thankful for (because many romance scenes in other books are a bit much for me), and on another hand made me a little sad (since I could still use a little more).

I'm a little sad it's been so long now between when I finished this and now as I write this, since now I cannot go into more detail about what makes this book work so nicely. And my book praising skills always lag far behind my criticizing abilities, as they just don't get a chance to to be used on a book like this often enough. Suffice to say I recommend this book, certainly to those who think the premise sounds interesting, and even to those like me that think it sounds a little stiff for their tastes, especially if you're interested in novels with strong, complex characters. ( )

I adored this book. Snappy writing, tragic (but not really) love affairs, politics & ideas. Delightful.

My only complaint is that the author transparently fell in love with her work fairly early on, so that things got a little too cute. I wouldn't have been able to resist the temptation, either, so there's not too much blame. If the author had been a bit more self-disciplined and a little less cute, it would have been a more 'serious' book. I probably wouldn't have loved it as well and wriggled with as much delight as I read it, so it's a tradeoff, I guess. ...

Occasional lapses into cutesiness aside, this book is highly recommended for all sorts of delightful thought experiments & sensawunda, fun prose (Elizabeth Bear can turn a phrase on a dime), action, fairly tight plotting, and the high happiness-per-hour of reading ratio. ( )

Two ambassador-spies and a security agent negotiate an energy trade on a female-ruled planet.

As others have said before me, this book is made of awesome. Each of the three protagonists has their own agenda, and the way their separate goals intersect and diverge drives most of the action. The reader needs to make a number of intuitive leaps, most of which are rooted in the characters' interactions, in order to fully understand the book.

And that's what it all boils down to, in the end: character. I connected with these characters. I felt the tension between them. I could read their history in all their exchanges. I found them compelling. I wanted to make the intuitive leaps Bear demanded of me. I'd even go so far as to say I was desperate to do so. I wanted to spend more time with these people. I wanted to figure them out. I wanted to see them achieve their goals. And I never, for one moment, believed it was going to be easy for them.

The plot is completely character-driven. Everything depends on who these people are and how they react to the situations they find themselves in. It's wonderful. I gobbled it straight up. I initially had some trouble reading quickly, but once I sunk into the story I was hard-pressed to put it down. I couldn't read fast enough. The plot moves along at a decent clip, and everything slots together very well indeed. There are a couple of twists that might be considered easy outs, but they're such a relief when they come that I couldn't find fault with them. One in particular left me grinning like an idiot.

The world, too, is fascinating, and Bear builds it up with great care. She writes in strict third person, so if the characters wouldn't remark on it, we don't hear about it. I had a great time piecing everything together from the little bits that did come out as the story ran its course. There's tons to think about here. The gender issues, the politics, the science... it's all good, my dears. It's all very, very good.

I highly recommend this. Seriously, people, you outta rush out and get a copy. Go! Shoo!

(A slightly longer version of this review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina). ( )

[Amy] This book appears to have been constructed from pure awesome. The science was interesting (both the Coalition science and that which they encounter later), the characters were both believable and interesting, the plot was, for the most part, compelling it its own right. I rarely enjoy a book with so few quibbles - and with this, I had few enough that I hardly remember any at all now, some weeks later.

I think it was the characters that made the book, though - and I read a blog post by this author yesterday that sums up her approach to characterization, which goes some way to explain why her people feel so much like, well, people. The flat-and-unconvincing-characters problem is one of my biggest peeves in fiction overall.

I think I need to go back and re-read those first two Bear books I was iffy about, now. I seem to be turning into quite an EBear fangirl, and I'm interested to see if it applies to those, too.
(http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ze...) ( )

Once again, Bear writes a story full of incredible characterization and plot. Her books are often not easy, but they are always worth the read. ( )