I just got and finished this book recently and as my first post I wanted to put some thoughts up, and see what other people thought of this newest book.
Structurally the book felt a lot like his other writing, particularly thematically regarding "balance" and political dynamics. The book almost seemed an exact parallel in a lot of ways to "The Eternity Artifact" so the lack of new plot was kind of disappointing, and along with the very slow development almost caused me to not complete it. I'd give it 3/5 stars for Modesitt's work - it had some new ideas, but wasn't any worse than other scifi books that he's written. If it was another author whom I didn’t have expectations towards I’d give it a 2/5.
What are people's thoughts on ecology in the book? I was disappointed by the lack of discussion of minute details related to the environment (Modesitt in an author's interview said he based his knowledge of the book on his job with the government in environmental surveying). There was very little real ecology going on the planet, and especially no disruptions being done on a macro scale. The only real disruption was an artificial core drilling - which on a "real" world wouldn't affect or hurt the world in any real way. Symbolically, I assume the core drilling can take the place of a major violation (global polluting) against a "real" world, and then the parallel (more slowly) would be a global catastrophe as a result of people being environmentally careless and making their world uninhabitable.
The funny part of the ecological pairing is that the companies seem to all be very efficient handlers of their ecosystems as long as government rules require them to be (the only company that has issues being one that is going outside the regulated guidelines. However, apparently none of the other worlds have any issues regarding pollution, or other ecological catastrophes that affect people – and I assume the environmental guidelines are the same across the ARM. I’m confused as how this book can argue for environmental balance, but still have the other worlds exist in apparent harmony (or at least not disharmony) with their surroundings. How is this issue real except on direct Gaia type worlds that we might offend? Also, this doesn’t really address sustainability on a world – sure the population of Stittara will extend their planet’s ecosystem for a longer period of time (paralleling their longer lives, again maybe symbolic against the “short” lives of polluted planet’s inhabitation), but the resources are still being used up. Stittara, like Earth, won’t be able to support life indefinitely unless a high technological level has already been reached allowing the world to dodge the heavy polluting or experimenting stages of growth (or maintains an agrarian culture) and develop in space. Clearly the forerunners didn’t have the advantage of starting out on a non-gaia type world – does it just boil down to, “Sucks to be them since they didn’t learn how to work within their environment?”
