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Title: Good read, a little bit manipulative
Review: The story has been done before in science fiction-- what sparks evolution? and what happens to us if a jump begins in our lifetime? Bear uses the characters of a biologist coming off a failed marriage, a disgraced paleontologist, and a government disease specialist to carry the plot that is meant to be an answer to this 'what if'.The approach is fresh, and well-written. My sole complaint was that I felt like he chose a very "good scientist/bad scientist" approach to members of the government and scientific communities and created an artificial kind of opposition that may have made us like his characters better but weakened the lovely complexity that he'd otherwise achieved. I think he could have respected his readers enough to let us make our own judgements without painting the character actions in such big obvious strokes. It's a common failing, but Bear's a good enough writer that seeing it here disappointed me.
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