If you can deal with the sometimes stiff writing and penciled in character relationships you'll find a book that has a lot to offer fans of hard science fiction.
One of the best aspects of the book is that it has a lot of heart, especially in the way that it handles the motivations of its main characters. For the most part these feel like real people making real mistakes and decisions in a very difficult situation. The relationships between these characters--in particular the romance sub-plots--aren't very well drawn though, which detracts from a number of the things that we are supposed to care about. There are also several questionable decisions made by characters in this book, but as I mentioned earlier I feel those decisions lend themselves to the reality of the characters. In fact decision making is one of the main themes running through the book (how do you make decisions when there is no rule book to follow? What is the right thing to do in an impossible situation).
Still there are some great themes of sacrifice and family that continued to pull me through the book.
Probably my other favorite aspect of the book was the science, which is very well laid out. Fans of physics will find a lot to enjoy in the setting of this book, which definitely pushes some boundaries. It's a pretty good mix of fiction theoretical physics that comes together to create a cohesive (if bizarre) setting. I was also impressed with the way the writer worked to incorporate other sciences. Often with hard sci-fi all you get is a lot of physics jargon, but this book mixed in archeology, medicine, military, linguistics, and computers.
The writing itself has some nice moments of humor, but can be occasionally too dry. There are some fantastic visuals in this book, but you'll have to use your imagination to conjure many of them as the descriptions tend to tell without showing very well.
All in all I actually quite enjoyed this book. I recommend you give it a try if you like hard sci-fi.
