I definitely enjoyed this book, and had a lot of trouble putting it down. The plot marched along pretty quickly, and the two stories were both very interesting. The science felt plausible, and where it didn't I was willing to suspend disbelief, except maybe in the area of the theory of consciousness which just seemed totally ridiculous.

My main criticism is that, at least so far, most of the characters seem somewhat one-dimensional. They react plausibly, but it feels like they are in the story to represent one particular attribute, and they do a good job of communicating that, but not a very good job of feeling like real people. I didn't care as much about them as I thought I might.

Still, the ideas are interesting, and the "alien" culture described in the book is very nicely fleshed out, and the issues that arise in the contact between the two cultures make a lot of sense. I'm eager to read the next book to find out what happens when the cultures begin to communicate more.