John

I loved Brin's second & third Uplift books, but this one was just too long and slow to finish. As other reviewers have mentioned, the narrator tries, but this book is just too slow in getting anywhere.

a good hard SF space opera - great ideas and a mostly believable technology/future universe. The narration is quite good.
Two problems prevent this book from being an excellent read:
1- this book needed much stronger editing; if it were shortened by 20% it would be an excellent space opera. as it stands, there are long stretches of the story that are peripheral at best, and often tedious (an entire chapter devoted to a bureaucratic debate on forming a navy? jeeez!
2- the book all but ends in mid-sentence, with no real resolution to the story at all: do not purchase it unless you are prepared to also purchase the sequel!

I read this and enjoyed book ages ago, but this narration made it impossible to finish. The book deserves a much better reader!

great example of hard SF - the authors (Corey is a pseudonym) remind me of Niven (at his best) but edgier.

the narration is as good as any I've heard.

hard to believe this won the Nebula: more info-dumps than story.

I finished it mostly because the narrator was decent: the story itself has potential but is poorly told.