This is your standard "alien-species-with-unusual-sexual-habits-that-humans-misunderstand" book. The heroine, Dr. Lynn Nussbamer, is a civil engineer who is called upon to evacuate the Dedelphi planet of all its inhabitants. The Dedelphi have contracted with Bioverse, Inc to cleanse and rebuild their entire ecosystem, destroyed by centuries of war. The Dedelphi are highly fractionalized and don't trust one another, let alone the corporation they've hired to help them. Confusion ensues. Mistakes are made. But it's all just boring.

The story is uneven and overly simple. It gets muddled in unnecessary technical descriptions that are never fully integrated into the plot. The characters are shallow and irrational; their motivation shifts often as the book progresses, but these changes are never explored or explained. Overall, this book was tedious. I expected more from Zettel. Her first book was a Philip K. Dick finalist. Only the lack of anything on TV kept me reading it all the way through to its unsurprising ending.