Picked up book this book at a PayLessBooks warehouse sale a while back, probably sometime last year or even earlier than that. It's been sitting patiently in a sealed box all these time. A couple of weeks ago, i finally opened up the box. It felt like opening a Christmas present. The sight of a whole box full of books i have never read is simply delightful ^^

In the Ocean of Night is a book of my favorite genre -- space sci-fi, so forgive me if i'm being somewhat biased with my review.

The plot follows a rather realistic view of the near future, with advancements in space exploration, though not going as far as inter-galactic space travel. SETI has been watching space, and looking. So has the people of the space program in the book. Some of what is happening now is getting worse in the future, with air pollution so bad it's causing fatal diseases to occur more commonly. The author also included a fair amount of the Japanese involvement in the space programs, considering two of the main character's closest friends are of Japanese descent. The New Sons is sort of an exaggeration of what could become of religion if it spirals out of control. If it interferes with scientific discoveries and politics.

Then again, i found some of the character's (the author's?) musings unfathomable at first read. Perhaps it would make more sense if i wasn't thumbing through the pages at a rather fast pace, hooked by the suspense of finding out more about the alien intelligence.

Did a bit of Googling and found that the book is the 1st of a series (wO0t!) Across the Sea of Suns is the sequel and i'm currently on the lookout for it. Btw, this book is a quite battered copy. But wth, as long as the contents are readable, i'm happy :)