I love octopuses and am fascinated by the psychology of them, so I was excited to read this. But overall: meh, it was aight.
The writing on a micro level is good. The chapters are bite sized and easy to get through. But on a macro level, meh. All around pacing felt slow. Not near as much happened in 500 pages as I would have expected. It's more about the people and the prospect of communication with an alien species than it is about an octopus society. Kinda misleading premise. Maybe I'm just dumb but I still never fully understood the point of Rustem or Eiko's plotlines, or why it felt like at the end we just skipped over significant events.
While I never necessarily wanted to put it down, I can't say I was very invested. I just keep reading hoping something would land or some big twist but, eh, not really.
It is the author's first book as I understand it too.