Book Review: Brightness Reef by David Brin

On a planet that is supposed to be lying fallow, members from six races have taken up residence, escaping from the politics and fighting of the main galaxy. A group of renegade humans make contact with the community which has grown up between the isolated races. The renegades claim they have come to collect the humans, and a select number of others, and bring with them representatives of the secretive race that uplifted humans.

Once again, Brin does an excellent job of crafting non-human characters in a believable and interesting way. Some of the characters are children, and although they give the book a rough start, they also do inspire empathy and are an important part of the plot. At the end of the book, why it's called Brightness Reef is still a mystery.

Brightness Reef shows all the problems with Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction. Both books are the start of a trilogy, and while Hamilton has to introduce a whole new universe, Brin re-introduces his for new readers. But where Brin has a large number of well-crafted characters, many of Hamiltons were very two-dimensional. Although admittedly, Hamilton did have some cool space technology in that Brin didn't have, in this book at least.

Title: Brightness Reef
Author: David Brin
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 1857233859
Published Date: 1995
Pages: 705

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Review by Paul Silver, 1997