Shadows of Eternity

3.5

This sure feels like hard SF!

My first Benford. Want to thank Netgalley & Gallery Books for the ARC.

There's a lot of really cool ideas in this. I liked the concept of a world where extra-terrestial messages are so common that there's an entire library with the sole purpose of studying and exploring those messages. It's a neat idea explored competently here with some bonus AI stuff.

The concept of first contact is explored in this, in multiple ways. Different kinds of alien life and the way they may differ from humans on Earth. More than that, it also explores the Great Filter and the survival of species over vast amounts of time.

It has the usual caveats of hard SF, I suppose... Don't expect too much from the characters or some aspects of the story, but if you just want some solid hard SF adventure, you'll most likely get that!