Highly entertaining book and a lovely followup to Children of Time. A bit nonplussed at the formula on display, "let's apply magic human uplift genetics to wildly inappropriate species". But given how well the author works with that it's fine, and bring in

the Portiids

and later the

bizarre truly alien species from Nod

makes it fine. I felt the middle third of the book lagged a bit, the conflict was all set up and then got strangely static. But the sheer alienness of so much going on was really nicely written. Solid book.