Interference by Sue Burke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The sequel to Semiosis starts out fantastically. I loved the amount of worldbuilding that had gone into this future Earth and the kinds of people they would be putting on a spaceship to interfere with Pax.

Ya gotta love the vagarities of human ignorance. It doesn't matter what we do or what we try, we always seem to f*** everything up.

So here we have an invasive species (us) doing what we do ALL OVER AGAIN on Pax. At least Steveland and the other locals have had an opportunity to get along for quite some time by now.

As we get to know both sides and watch the lies and the germs spread, I started getting a sinking feeling. All this downward spirals happened instead of a nice (possibly twisty) fantastic uptick with a sometimes wise Steveland. I discovered I had to start reading the book as if it was a commentary.

That isn't bad, of course. We all should see what the consequences should be for our blundering, mindless behavior and see the destructiveness of authoritarians. *shrug*

This is complex, well-thought-out, and subtle. Or sometimes not very subtle at all. That's FINE.

I guess I just wanted more diving into the whole cooperation mythos, more toe-dipping in other intelligences, new ways to make things work in the middle of sooooo much crazy interference.

The rest works on those levels, but I think this novel could have been GREAT. Not just good. But that's just my opinion.

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