Done here and plunging on to the final book in the series, Heaven's Reach. This one went on hiatus lost behind a couch for almost a year..so took a little while for me to remember what was going on when I left off. So far..the bad reviews of books in this series tend to be people who like to start at book #4 or #5 in a six book series and discover that A: they can't figure out what is going onB: they don't like the authors writing style. These criticisms are valid though. If you are expecting a...

Just as with the first book in the Uplift Storm trilogy, there's a lot of complexities with aliens and human mentalities and sociological subplots. Brin is the best world builder as he includes so many plots points and flavors... I know its too much for some people. But I love it, for exactly the same reason I dislike Lord of The Ring... too many details that make it more of a travelogue than a novel.BUT... here the characters aren't just walking through a landscape and taking it in and maybe re...

Storyline: 4/5Characters: 3/5Writing Style: 2/5World: 4/5A creative confusion unburdened by the strictures of brevity. Infinity's Shore is unpolished and unrestrained in the same way as the Uplift series has been all along. Despite the unnecessary profusion of characters perspectives, the staccato snippets of parallel storylines, and the distraction of ever-burgeoning galactic side-machinations, Brin tells a great story. For suspense, excitement, and wondrous developments there is not another Up...

All of a sudden, the tension has been cranked up several notches, and it shows no sign of slowing down. The story has quickly become much more complex, and is so much better for it. The characters have grown, and aside from a few episodes that were obviously designed for the sole purpose of getting a character from one place to the next, everything flowed naturally.Since I still knew many of the characters and the species, and I took time off from the first book, Brightness Reef, things were muc...

Run-of-the-mill genre SF, hastily written for a market. The plot creaks as it winds through its predictable twists and turns. The action, however, is made confusingly hard to follow due to the author’s trick of creating cheap tension by switching back and forth from one storyline to another at critical moments. The characters are stock and overdue for retirement from Sci-fi Central Casting. The heroes are neatly labeled and satisfyingly invulnerable, even when they suffer grievous wounds and tra...

Call this one a 2.5 star book. I do want to know what happens. There are plenty of cliffhangers throughout and some big ones at the end. I like some of the characters, Dwer, Emerson, Rety, maybe Gillian. The aliens are cool and very different from any other aliens I've read about in 30 years of reading Science Fiction. So I give him a lot of points for originality and inventiveness. He seems to think up new and different alien species effortlessly. The science is good, which is a huge plus. But....

Shit just got real!OK, so remember how Brin left off Brightness Reef on a cliffhanger? Jophur ship had just landed above the returned Rothen vessel, totally changing the balance of power on Jijo. Sara and the starfaring Stranger, whom we now know to be Emerson from the Streaker escaped the zealots and have fallen in with a group horse-riding human women and urs. Dwer and Rety are stuck on a mad robot. Oh, and Alvin and his comrades sunk to the bottom of the ocean, where they were rescued by

Only read about 50 pages. I've learned to be very wary of authors who start their book with a list of 75 characters. The map is less of cautionary item. The final straw is that there are 6 different species on this world. So all together you're left to deal with at least 100 words of random letters that you don't quite know for sure if it's a name of an individual, place or species. Then randomly assemble the creatures from various mammal, crustacean, bird and lizard parts. Maybe if I had starte...

While I wish this book was a bit more tightly written with less POV characters it did seem to move the story forward and give me hope that the final book in the trilogy will tie together all the different dangling threads. This was a rather long audio clocking in at a bit over 26 hours so thankfully the narration by George Wilson was excellent.

The previous book was confusing to read as there were too many characters being shifted between which was headache inducing but improved as the centers of action resolved. This book brings fully into play the story plot involving the Streaker's crew from Startide Rising which was a glad addition as open ending of that book always left me wanting to know their fate.There is still two many point of view characters that make the reading a bit painful. The conversion of one of the point of view char...

David Brin is fast becoming another of my favorite authors. Especially with this series. I do love the alien races he has created, and the way they are able to mesh together on the planet Jijo as they don't anywhere else in the universe. The idea of all sapient races having been 'uplifted' by a patron race except Humans. The whole premise of his universe and peoples are intricate and all consuming. I couldn't put either of the books in this series down until I finished them.

Hallelujah, free at last! Events started to pick up toward the end (and I mean REALLY at the end, like 85% through the book) and enough complex stuff actually happens that I can't recommend skipping straight from Brightness Reef to Heaven's Reach, but Lord Almighty was this book an exasperating read. So much rehashing of events from the previous book, in combination with an irritating tendency on the part of author to use simple past tense in places where past perfect would have been more approp...

Peace has endured on the world of Jijo, where six races shelter from the wider civilisation of the Five Galaxies, for decades. That peace has now been shattered by the arrival of a starship of the Jophur, a powerful Galactic race, searching for the fugitive Terran exploration vessel Streaker and the billion-year-old secrets it contains. As members of the six races struggle to survive under the brutal Jophur occupation, the crew of the beleaguered Streaker realise they must draw the Jophur away f...

Bit difficult going at the start mainly because of the multitude of characters and their different physical attributes and traits! Actually I had forgotten I had read the first book in the second series until chapter two where sections, including the unresolved ending, came back to me! More enjoyable the more you get into it until it was difficult to put down, and wildly imaginative. I will now have to read the third book before I forget what has happened to date. Strongly recommended but please...

To me, this book felt a bit weak compared to the previous entry - it is also a partial retread of the same plot. The last book was about interlopers from space landing on Jijo and shattering their fragile peace, and this book is about... different interlopers landing on Jijo and shattering their fragile peace, but bigger! This is a recurring problem as we will see with the final book in the trilogy.

Brin takes this trilogy to more and more exciting levels with volume #2. The Dolphins are amongst the most wonderful ideas every developed in scifi while the uplift galaxy is amongst the most intimidating prospects. What a combination!

Excellent Book 2. There is a lot going on in this series: lots of characters/aliens, cultures and plot arcs. Brin manages to make the aliens, truly alien, yet still very relatable. Looking forward to the final entry.

I want to like this more, but I'm pretty sure the author wrote it for TV and not for reading. The rapid flashing back between characters almost always at some cliffhanger leaves you feeling like nothing ever happens... or that you're missing the action and finding out about it after the fact. For such an amazingly long book... there's is lots of time to tell the character stories one at a time. The exact sequencing is just not needed.

I'm glad that we got to see a lot more of Streaker and hear about where it's been. I did skim over quite a few parts that were pretty dry and boring. I did feel like not a whole lot happened in this book, just a lot of people running around and not doing much. Overall 3 out of 5 stars.

More low vs high tech warLots of simultaneous story lines slowly converge. Good variety of beings, personalities, and environs. Bit of a cliff hanger so I'm glad Kindle format let's me instantly move to the next book. What's the deal with all Sci fi hardware having a part called a motivator. Is Brin making fun of Star Wars?