Mike Cross

This is an ambitious and often engaging book, but it badly needed a tougher edit. The characters are well drawn and believable, and the core plot is genuinely interesting. For much of the novel, the science is presented in a way that feels grounded and thoughtful, even when dealing with speculative ideas. I also appreciated that the author largely avoids heavy-handed preaching about environmental collapse and humanity’s damage to the planet; the themes are present, but not relentlessly moralizing. That said, the book is far too long. There are vast stretches of exposition, procedural detail, and repetition that add little to the plot or character development. While the “protocol” framing explains some of this, it doesn’t fully justify the sheer volume of words. By the final third, the science becomes increasingly far-fetched, and the narrative momentum slows under its own weight. Overall, a solid idea with strong characters, but one that would have been far more effective at half the length.