Satan's World

A decent space-opera adventure story with some hard sci-fi concepts in the mix. A bit muddled in its first third, with the goals of the protagonists not always clear; interrupted occasionally by too-long talking-head expository passages; and a bit flat in its last pages with long stretches of xenobiology and xenopsychology that read like overgeneralized lectures; Satan's World is nonetheless a decently entertaining and diverting read with some nice passages of action and adventure, such as an assault on a fortified compound and an exploration of a rogue planet. It is very cool, too, that of the four main protagonists, two are very different types of non-humans. The book ultimately was up-and-down for me: very gripping in sections, a bit boring in others, but overall a decent effort by Mr Anderson and worth at least one read for the good stuff that is in there.