Book review: Sundiver

A David Brin potboiler. Of the Uplift Universe; see-also the Brightness Reef trilogy. See-also Goodreads. I'm pretty sure I liked this better the first time around. But his prose is leaden despite his best Ive-been-to-writing-class attempts to add something to it, so shorn of surprises it isn't such fun. My appalling memory means that some surprises remain, but really - apart from the plot, which is best avoided - the book is mainly introducing you to the Uplift Universe and the Wolfling Humans and so on; and without the interest of that being gradually revealed, there isn't much left.

Too much is wrong to make the thing worth ripping to shreds, but I think the idea of Culla having SuperZappoLazerVision is the worst part. It isn't physically plausible to have SZLV. I doubt it is plausible to have LV at all, but that would have been a smallish miracle, and all that was really needed for the plot, but oh no they have to be usable as weapons too for the grand finale. Yawn. Keeping them secret for 100 kyr isn't believeable either. And all of this stems from the mere need to not have a machine onboard that could have done it; but GalTech could have got a machine onboard trivially. So it is all very silly indeed. Roll on the desperately self-congratuatory finish and we're done; whew.