This novel really irked me, for several reasons. I think my primary complaint is in the characters - they were undeveloped, unrealistic, and clearly vessels for the science and story rather than dynamic individuals. I didn't care about any of them, except for maybe the intelligent cells themselves.

It didn't help that the plot was slow-moving and required a lot of suspension of disbelief. I don't know enough about hard science to judge the likelihood of any of this novel's events, but from a layman's perspective, they seemed so absurd - and more and more so as the book progresses - that I had a hard time continuing to read past the halfway point. I love science fiction. I used to devour Michael Crichton's books. But they were enjoyable and exciting because they seemed at least somewhat plausible; Blood Music doesn't.

What really killed this novel for me, though, was the writing style. The prose is straight-forward, detailed, and kind of...cold. It's written like a scientific report: here's what happened, to whom, and when. Bear throws in little unnecessary details - "he went to Jack-in-the Box for breakfast", "he got a Dos Equis from the fridge" - which just distract from the story. The detached way in which it's written made it hard to read - I felt like I was plowing through it, rather than becoming engrossed in it.

I know I seem harsh. Clearly, with all the five-star reviews, not everyone feels the way I do. But if you have little experience with science fiction, I would avoid Blood Music as your first exploration of the genre, unless you have a really strong interest in nanotechnology.

Oh and be sure to check your edition for typos before you pick it up - mine was full of them, on almost every page. Big ones, too - the word "hi" would often appear where the word "in" should have been, and a lot of punctuation was missing. I'm not sure how that happened, but it was also very distracting.