I see why people rate this one so highly. I burned it down in about 2 days, which is both due to it's relatively short length, and it's easy but engaging style.

I won't go into specifics, since I think I'm the last one around here to read it, so just the 10,000 foot view.

Some books are really dense and hard to get through, and at the end, leave you wondering if any of the characters progressed at all. Some books move so fast that might swear that the book read itself while you slept, for all the continuity you experienced. Right in the middle are those books that move quickly, but are written in a way that leaves you feeling like you aren't missing anything you need, or are weighted down with anything you don't. This book is an example of the last type.

Someone else mentioned that it felt like a great homage to "Starship Troopers", and I totally see that. As a battlelogue of one soldier's exciting-turned-regretful-turned-accepting journey through war with a veritable nature's field journal of unashamedly bizarre xenobiology, there was no obtuse technobabble, and conversely, no technology that I felt was "practically magic" by anthropological definition. It just worked. Actually, it worked a bit too well: near the end, I was envisioning how this could be turned into a movie. I have no idea if it's on that track, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least (I checked; it is).

I would have given this another 1/2 star (leaving room for the "perfect five star book") if not for the occasional bouts of 'Crichtonosis', when one character is used strictly to set up another as a mouthpiece for showing off the author's cool theory/grasp of science/need to educate in the middle of an otherwise enjoyable read. Honestly, though, in some cases, this really irritates me. Here, though, it fit because the...two?...times it happened, it wasn't very drawn out, and was positioned at a turning point for the story, making it one part necessary, one part "look at me".