Here is a review left by a customer on a product. Would you say he was satisfied or dissatisfied?
Title: not worth your time, really
Review: I usually rely on Hugo and Nebula award-winners to help me wade through the mediocre science fiction / fantasy, and get to the good stuff. But I feel let down in this case: This book is actually mystery, and a tepid mystery at that (slow and non-clever). The science fiction trappings ranged from unremarkable to underwhelming ('sorry, our bureacracy deletes reports after 3yrs', 'in an age where messages take as long to travel between systems as people do, you might as well visit in person than send a letter'). I felt I was maybe 20yrs in the future, but certainly not 10000yrs. The *only* bit of world-building I found interesting was the way humans and the alien species regarded each other, and this was an incidental bit of only 2 chapters.I'm not sure why this book won a Nebula; myself, I squarely peg it as part of the mountain of competent-writing-but-uninspired s.f./fantasy. Whether you like action, ideas, characters, or mystery, there are many better choices out there.
