boring and tedious, misleading in its premise

Wonderfully imaginative and unique vehicle by which to explore that which makes us human. Definitely worth the read. However, while I found it a 5 star concept, I only gave it 3.5-4 stars for two reasons. First, I am not fond of a reliance on first person internalizations, a style that the author relies on heavily throughout the book. Second, I found the last act to be a bit disappointing. Sort of a cop out. Mr Naylor seems just too invested in, too connected to, his characters. The overall book would have benefited enormously from some tough love editing.

A good tale of the difficulties of communicating, whether it’s with another species, another person, or to ourselves.

Interesting ideas, but goes a bit too far in turning the protagonist octopus into an unstoppable killing machine. And taking the idea of protecting the island into “we will sink your boat and then massacre all your crew” seems to be too easily passed over as an acceptable response.

A dystopian future where multinational companies provide wonders of technology while skimming profits of organized crime activities. A back drop to a world where the first sentient AI robot assists in the investigation of the first discovery of a non-human biological intelligence.

Smart, thought-provoking, intricate. A book that kept me interested from the first page to the last.

There were multiple times throughout the book where I stopped and pondered questions about the nature of consciousness and perception, which is what I think the author was aiming for. I think either the book is a little too smart for it’s own good, or I might not be intelligent enough to understand what was being conveyed. There were times the story lost me, as it felt disjointed between the multiple perspectives and the reasons for character actions and at other moments it felt like there wasn’t enough meat on the bones. Anything that makes you think this much is probably worth the time overall and I respect the author for the talent and dedication. Only taking a star off because I can’t help shaking the feeling this would have been better without the metaphor of it all and just been presented more straightforward in terms of what the author wanted to discuss.

Such a great story, fantastic character work and a whole lot of other levels of things going on.

It seems like sci fi is rapidly going woke. This book, like so many others recently, insists on shoving the author’s wokeness about pronouns in the face of the reader. Makes a good story like this hard to read.