This book gave me a really bad vibe from the outset. Maybe it was the captain's use of the word "rape" as an epithet. Maybe it's the token female aristocrat whose sole job is so predictable from the very outset: (view spoiler) . Maybe it's the incessant stupidity and naivety of the big players in the story throughout the course of its run. We'll get into all of that during the course of this revie

[to get rescued then fall in love with and have babies for the unlikeable leading man (hide spoiler)

[falls for Rod by the mere fact of his existence -- he barely talks to her in the story! (hide spoiler)

[except that fully functioning alien persons are split among more than one body via their caste system (hide spoiler)

[the choice to give the aliens a translator caste and make their voices mirror copies of the humans they talk to (hide spoiler)

This book gave me a really bad vibe from the outset. Maybe it was the captain's use of the word "rape" as an epithet. Maybe it's the token female aristocrat whose sole job is so predictable from the very outset: (view spoiler) . Maybe it's the incessant stupidity and naivety of the big players in the story throughout the course of its run. We'll get into all of that during the course of this review.I'll limit my spoilers to those in the opening couple of chapters and what you can read on the dust jacket, everything else will be tagged as a spoiler. There is nothing in this review that would surprise you if you've read the dust jacket and have a passing familiarity with tvtropes.org.The story opens as tough-guy Commander Rod Blaine gets back from saving damsel Sally Fowler from evil rebels on New Chicago, where they all speak like Chicaehhhgans and of course their economy is of course heavy industrial (this pattern plays out in all planet-from-a-place instances in this book). Also rescued are evil greedy token Muslim trade dude Horace Bury and his Indian-sounding-name assassin servant Nabib. Rod gets promoted for being really stupid and is given command of a ship. Their main function through the remainder of the story will be to screw things up and make copious references to Allah's beard.Rod's mission is to take Sally and Bury back to the capital, but circumstances interrupt as they encounter ALIENS in next solar system over. Instead of waiting for a few months to organize an appropriate envoy back to the aliens' home planet (they can't come to us for unknown reasons) they decide they've just gotta send Rod and Sally to do the job, and we're off.As I mentioned earlier, there's a lot that bothers me about the book. The writing is mediocre. Even in what are supposed to be emotional moments, you're going to get the basic "the memory would come as if someone had pricked his soul with a needle" type of inane language. It's fine. It's serviceable. You aren't going to read any sentences that make you think, "Wow, that is well-constructed," but it communicates ideas. We could wish for more, but this alone would have the book at three stars, not one.So what is the real problem? My friend told me to think of this book as if it had been written in the fifties, and he's not far from wrong. The book is from 1974 and it FEELS its age. Instead of damn it, Captain Rod's favorite epithet is "rape it." Sally Fowler is an obvious token character. She (view spoiler) And of course she has to give the alien the prim and proper explanation of human reproduction. The author apparently couldn't bear to characterize ascientist as being able to present a clinical view of the thing.Another thing you might feel more strongly in this book than in others is the idea that religion will still be important to people when they're flying around in space. It's not impossible, but the amount of attention paid it in this book feels oppressive to someone living in the relatively secular 2010s. The idea that anyone would even think to consult a chaplain about anything important way off in 2500 is mind-boggling.That's not the only issue. The characterization of most of the actors in this story is flat to the point of fault. We spend a fair amount of time with a few midshipmen throughout the story, and I swear that all I can remember about them is that one talked in an Irish accent, another in a Scottish, and the third in the "default" accent of normally written English. I think one of them was also meant to be the level-headed one. But damned if I remember a thing about their motivations, like whether they had anyone or anything they cared about outside the navy -- not even the navy, just their immediate tasks as determined by the plot.A few other characters get screen time. There is the gruff-but-at-his-core-a-good-guy Russian admiral. There is the scheming evil greedy token Muslim guy. There's the naive to the point of fault scientist who cares for nothing but his curiosity. This one really infuriated me.To some extent or another, all the characters in this story completely underestimate the aliens and completely overestimate their ability to understand or deal with them. This they do even after events have begun to suggest that the aliens might not be as simple as we suspect. But the treatment of the scientist . . . the author just jams this point home over and over again. Alarm klaxons are going off, the landing craft is exploding, a death laser is aimed at the core of the galaxy and five minutes from firing, and this scientist is gonna be saying, "Surely you understand captain, these aliens are no threat." (None of these events actually happen in the book, it's just for illustrative purposes.) Over and over again. This is lazy characterization, and for no end that I could deduce by the finale of the book.And of course the man himself, Rod Blaine. Basically, this guy is a weird blend of a hardass Patton and a just-starting-off James T. Kirk a la the recent Star Trek movie. That and a little hint of fifties spousal abuse thrown in. I cannot see a thing to like about this character because he doesn'tanything a robot captain programmed with captain stereotypes wouldn't do. Throughout the book he handles his command and his people incomptently. There is no, nothing human referred to by the symbol "Roderick Blaine." Even his name, for god's sakes. Ugh.My last point of contention is the aliens themselves. I can't go into too much detail here because of my aspiration that this review be read by people before they pick up the book,pick up the book. My biggest problem here is that the aliens are not nearly weird enough. As far as I can tell, there is little different between them and us, (view spoiler) . To pick just one example of how this plays out in the books, (view spoiler) is just the lazy writing of someone with an insufficient imagination.I love science fiction. Even books I don't particularly like I normally blaze through. This book was a slog. It was a struggle. It took me weeks, and some of those weeks had ten-hour plane flights in them any two of which should have been sufficient to knock this out if there was anything lovely about it. This is a bad book. Do not read it. You have been warned.