A fast-paced story with an interesting premise, the Neanderthal Parallax (set largely in Canada... Huzzah!) is an easy and engaging read. The narrato..Show More »r of the audio version brings the characters to life well, and the hours pass quickly. My choice to give it four stars is only in comparison to the first book in the series, but all three are definitely recommended.

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I liked the first book in this series a lot. The second one wasn't as good, but I still liked it. I was hoping that this book would redeem the second,..Show More » but I thought it was terrible! I had to make myself finish it. There are so many things that were bad it's hard to know where to begin and I certainly can't list them all. The main female character, Mary, is often unreasonably bitchy and childish while the main male character (a neanderthal) is always calming her and being understanding of her petulance- it makes them both kind of boring. The writing was weak, there was hardly any character development. Well, we do learn that Mary seems to be quite the Star Trek devotee, several times connecting something in the story with a Star Trek episode - she knew the names of guest stars and who had directed. Perhaps Mr. Sawyer needed some filler and so he took from his own fanatical knowledge? According to the book, Americans are repugnant, there aren't very many American characters and none of them are good people. Throughout the series neaderthals are portrayed as having taken much better care of their world while we "gliksins" have ruined ours, which we have, no arguement there. But at one point the author compares neanderthals to Canadians and gliksins to Americans. Ok I get it, he hates Americans. Next sentence contains a spoiler: He also doesn't seem too keen on men (homo sapiens that is), so it's no surprise that the big villain in the book is an American male. Lazy, boring writing and I didn't like the narration either. Too bad, it started out as such a promising series.

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