Incandescence by Greg Egan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book definitely falls under a hardcore sub-category of Hard-SF. Great for fans of Dragon's Egg, Flux, The Inverted World, or The Integral Trees / The Smoke Ring where we get a significant amount of time from the PoV's of the aliens as they discover the science and topography of their world.

I love these kinds of books for exactly that reason. Great science, fascinating discoveries, and truly ODD topographies. They're mystery novels for physical sciences. :)

BUT. For the same reasons, I often get angry at the tediousness of them. The dragging pace and the often boring characters. *sigh*

But it's not a reason to throw out the novels altogether. There's a real rich atmosphere going on in them. Incandescence arrives at a lost, genetically enhanced alien species that forced itself into a kind of survival in the tight liveable bands surrounding a neutron star. We're forced to discover this the hard way, along with the aliens, from first principles.

If you love math and topography and discovery, I TOTALLY recommend this novel. For everyone else more interested in characters... look elsewhere. :)

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