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Title: Competent, but for Clarke less than expected.
Review: Much of Clarke's work has made that indefinable leap into spellbinding mystical flight woven with the science of the world.This book is well crafted, but lacks mystery and never took flight from that spark of genius in the depths which Clarke has displayed in other books. Good as sci-fi goes, but way below the original 2001, "Childhood's End" or "The Deep Range", or "The City and the Stars".Some interesting ideas there. ZPF physics (which predicate the possibility of faster than light travel BTW), but the book felt kind of flat to me. It seems that Clarke's ideas have been shaped by his experience with the somewhat religiously based civil war there where he has lived.
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