Carmen Dula is a likable, relatable, realistic main character, and a sometimes dispassionately honest narrator. At some point, particularly since she starts the book 18 years old on the uncertain, anxious, stressed-out side of a pretty big family relocation and ends it with a graduate degree and unlikely place of prominence in human history, you would like to see her grow and change, leave the smartassery behind in favor of introspection and insight. She doesn't, and that's to the book's detriment. But the Big Idea is kind of cool, sort of 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Contact by way of Ray Bradbury, and you are engrossed enough not to find yourself bobbing up out of the story. Will read, and plan to enjoy, the sequel.