Well, that was depressing. ( )

Overall I found this book pretty good, it was slow at some points but otherwise I did enjoy it.

**Spoiler**
The story picks up following a generation ship that was sent to colonize a planet, aurora. Book details their arrival and some of the people's return. The planet is able to be lived on but there is tremendous wind, and some type of disease or virus that causes some problems for some and others seem ok. The group splits up and half decide to stay their and make it work and the rest decide to return to earth.
The rest of the book details the group returning to earth. They learn via watch earth feeds how to put themselves into sleep during the long return home and the computer (AI) watches over them and deals with stuff.
They arrive back at earth and after some drama about how best to slow down and seeing that the earth people are divided on if they should return or not they land. The Chinese take them in, they have hard time adjusting to living on a true planet (all those that returned never set foot on aurora), learn that we messed up the planet via global warming (surprise political message), learn that we continue to sent people out and decide what to do with their lives which is to help recreate beaches. There was one person who was in shuttle outside the main ship who returned as well but we never learn what happens to him. Likewise we never learn how things turn out on Aurora for those who stayed. A sequel maybe some day? ( )

O evoluție față de cărțile sale anterioare, dar KSR tot nu scrie literatură, ci pseudo-manuale de info-dump. ( )

This story is certainly thoughtful and imaginative, with a lot of effort given to explaining the physics and biology of space travel. I just felt often that I was reading notes on a story rather than the story itself. ( )

Could not put this one down for about the first 2/3. After that I actually had to convince myself to pick it up and bother to finish. Odd one to try to decide how I felt about it. ( )