I really wanted to love this book. The premise was fascinating, the characters had lovable qualities and there was unique world building. The writing style left much to be desired and the pacing was slow, even when there was action happening. I may give this book another chance in the future, because I really do want to know what happens to these characters and their worlds, but right now, I can't devote my energy to 500 pages that I'm constantly re-reading because the phrasing didn't make sense.

Thanks to NetGalley for my eARC version in exchange for my honest review.

This book drew me in from start to finish. I'm not going to recap the plot, because I think discovering it by reading is best. But here are some of thing things I really liked:

1) The aliens are VERY alien - as they should be. The communication, culture(s), and everything was fascinating.
2) Flip, and really all of the AIs - great, funny, and interesting characters.
3) The complexity of space travel and the ways humans implemented how they approached it.
4) The mystery of the plot as it was slowly uncovered what was happening, and if there would even be a way to fix anything.
5) The human characters - their personalities and ideas. They were on the whole pretty altruistic - it was an optimistic take on society - but they still had very different opinions and ideas.

I'd recommend this book. It's a stand alone, and is very good science fiction.

There's a lot going on in this Sci-fi standalone and it dives right away into the dangers of this futuristic work for humans.

This ebook ARC required a lot of time to process and figure out what things were and that reason alone is why I'm giving it two stars I started this in August. The characters are somewhat the savior of this book but despite them it didn't keep my interests. I went into this blind and on impulse because of the cover but it may never happen again due to this.

I appreciate Astra Publishing House for approving me for this one.

4 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
Humans, resettled on New Earth after Origin Earth was destroyed, have entered a partnership with the Kmet, who have Portals allowing instantaneous transport across the galaxy. Only it's a partnership the humans don't really understand. When word comes that one of six long-shot arkships from New Earth has arrived at its destination, the Kmet insist on gathering all humans in one place.
Review
I’m a big fan of Julie Czerneda’s writing. Yet I’ve been disappointed by her most recent books. I went into this book, therefore, with a little trepidation. I’m happy to say, though, that the Czerneda I enjoy is largely back. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s got strong characters, nifty aliens, and good ideas, (fairly) well executed.
The book stumbles a bit in its early stages, too eager to introduce us to all the key characters and shifting viewpoints before we’ve got a real footing in the story. There are telepresence clones (epitomes), sophisticated shape-changing AI (alternate intelligences), a teleportation portal, and mysterious aliens. Unfortunately, Czerneda doesn’t spend much time explaining how any of this works. The AIs are pretty clear, and develop throughout the story. The aliens are … mysterious, and that’s partly what the book is about. The epitomes, though, get by on the thinnest of handwaving, and the Portals are never really explained at all. You need two of them, they need ‘pilots’ to manage them, and they just work, somehow. It’s not entirely a minor point – the Portals are key to the plot, and I found the fact that they were so vague a continued irritant – especially toward the end, when they’re used in a way that made no sense to me, and was not required.
Somewhat surprisingly, for Czerneda, the aliens are also somewhat underplayed. We learn interesting things about them through the course of the book, but one key aspect – what their ‘Duality’ would actually, physically mean – is never really explained. Czerneda does incorporate a number of other gee-whiz aspects that largely make up for it, though. She also sprinkles in some red herrings – tantalizing suggestions that never really come to anything. Whether that’s verisimilitude or annoyance will likely vary by the reader.
The end also wraps up surprisingly quickly. Maybe because the book was already 600 pages long (though it reads quickly). I would have wished though, for a little more resolution for the fate of some key characters. Those characters don’t always act consistently, which undermines them a bit – e.g., in one case, the Arbiter saves people against their will, where in another he does not, for no clear reason. Another, introduced early on, and important toward the end, is a little too intuitive to be credible.
As a side note, Czerneda continues her one woman campaign to bring back contractions that are now less common - "I've an idea" instead of "I have an idea" or "I've got an idea". I approve in general, and occasionally do the same, but the frequency of these contractions becomes distracting at times.
Largely, though, this is a welcome return to form from a talented, inventive author.
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fascinating aliens, fascinating world-building - but a little bit confusing.
Earth is lost, and the settlers on New Earth have reached a working partnership with some aliens who found them - a somewhat uneasy working partnership. Prior to these aliens appearing, New Earth had its own space program, and had sent out settler ships of its own, but they were all presumed lost. Then a message appears from one of the ships that was successful, and suddenly the balance between humans and Kmet is changed.

Some of the reveals later in the book were somewhat predictable, but the details of how they happen are interesting. You may find yourself guessing; keep reading anyway!

The chapter titles are quotes - waiting to see what in the chapter they apply to is part of the fun! Also a lot of fun is Flip the AI, who is my favorite character more than any of the humans.

A few confusing bits - why the humans suddenly decide to stop referring to the settler worlds by the names of the ships they sent out, and start referring to them by numbers, is not at all clear. Also, throughout the book, New Earth is sometimes just referred to as Earth, and so one has to mentally check and make sure that no one is talking about Original Earth, presumed lost after contact is lost. A few things I won't specifically pick on, so as not to give away the plot, though.

I can see the potential for sequels involving some of the humans, and aliens, from the settler worlds that we meet - Beth Seeker, for example, probably has more to do and more places to be!

This is a solid standalone science fiction novel that rewards the patient reader, but the execution was a bit flawed. The start is quite slow and hard to sink into, with many unfamiliar terms and alien tech that I just couldn't wrap my head around. Humans have made an alliance with an alien race that has given them amazing new technology to traverse space from their home on New Earth, but when they set out to discover the whereabouts of the sleeper spaceships sent out centuries earlier, they discover that their alien allies may have different goals and expectations. I was very engaged in the latter two-thirds of this novel, and I enjoyed most the characters, but I couldn't follow along with some of the leaps they made, and the storyline taking place on Doublet felt unnecessarily abstruse. Strong themes of communication, empathy, and understanding throughout, a fascinating look at alien encounters, but the book would have benefited from tighter editing and perhaps a glossary or a slightly more thorough grounding in the new world at the start. Thank you to NetGalley, Astra Publishing House, and DAW for a digital review copy.

<i>Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i>

I love science fiction that isn't afraid to be ambitious, and this book has that in spades. However, despite being immediately drawn in by the premise, which reminded me so much of Ted Chaing's <i>The Story of Your Life</i>, I struggled with this novel. The prose is grammatically quite strange at times. Some chapters can be quite dense and filled with terms that left me wishing for a glossary to help. Characters seemed to make leaps of logic I couldn't quite follow, and I was often left feeling like I was treading water without a lifejacket until I could grasp onto some plot detail a few chapters later.

It is also very slow moving, at least in the beginning -- things didn't really click until I was about 30% of the way into the book. It didn't help that I was in a bit of a reading slump when I started, so keeping with this book was a challenge. However, once things got going, I was really invested in the plot. The differences between each planet, and the dynamics between Henry, Flip, and Killian kept me hooked.

I loved the incredible detail and nuance that went into developing the Kmeth, which are the alien race working alongside humans on their mission to find and rescue humans scattered on various planets from previous expedition missions out into space. Kmeth-Here, especially, was equally fascinating and menacing in their unpredictability and, for lack of a better term, alien nature.

The pace fell apart for me in the final section of the book, and left me wishing for a longer resolution. I also felt like the Beth-centric chapters were a little disjointed and maybe not needed at all. There was really potential for a 5-star book, for me, hidden underneath a rough execution. I recommend this book if you're up for a bit of a challenge. It is definitely one that will stick with me for a long time.

An amazingly humane hard sci-fi book about soft sciences. This is all about the sociology, the psychology, the linguistics, the anthropology of an alien civilisation. The beginning is slow, putting in place the setting, but once the book starts on the "problem", you can't put it down. This is a slow burn, realistic "mystery". This book is very realistic, if people were more well-intentioned in the future. And I like that possibility, so I was happy to tag along. We don't need psychopaths in charge to have serious problems, misunderstandings are quite enough, just like natural disasters and the unknown.
If you like the idea of discovering an alien civilisation, if you wonder how we would communicate, understand each other, try to exchange... and how all of that could go wrong, then this is a book for you.
It could have been a little shorter, and I had a little trouble getting into the writing style at first, but I found this novel absolutely fascinating. I really enjoyed the message in general, the importance placed on communication and understanding. This was so well explored. Highly recommended!

[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
To Each This World releases November 15, 2022

1.5/5

Initially, I was really excited to dive into this. The premise is incredibly interesting, but there was something lacking for me to be able to fully connect to it.
Unfortunately, the writing style really got in the way for me. I was constantly rereading paragraphs and pages, just to try and get something to stick. Structurally, it was very clunky and there was ample use of contractions that were quite odd, unnatural, and borderline improper for the way they were placed in sentences.
I think this book would have benefitted from a glossary or diagram so that readers could better understand all of the worlds, aliens, and how everything was connected.

Worlds 3, 4, and 5 were the most interesting and the stronger sections of this book.
There are 3 main pov’s in this novel: Henry (the arbiter), Killian (the pilot), Beth (the seeker).
The use of epitome’s and multiple vessels for one body/soul was quite interesting and a concept I liked.
From what I gathered, there were six worlds, six sleeper ships, an alien species called “Kmet”, as well as an AI type of communication.
There was also some sailor in the beginning named Joey Lace, who wrote a message in a bottle saying he was alive, but I don’t ever remember it being mentioned again.

Definitely potential here, but could use some structural revision.


“I’m here to save people. Even if they don’t want to be saved.”

“He had to learn exactly what the Kmet wanted Humans for—in Rena’s life cycle event, in the Duality itself—before returning this Portal to New Earth.”

“You are our hope. New Earth is our home. You have done the needful. When all Humans-There are Humans-Here, when we descend at long last, our Duality shall be established.”

“I think that’s what these worlds were for—to let different species meet and learn about one another, each with a safe space of their own, challenged by a risk only surmountable by working together. It’s a diplomatic mission. Perhaps a test as well, to see who deserves the Portal technology.”

I really wanted to like this. The cover art is pretty, the plot sounds exotic and promising, but the prose. . . man, the prose is just not it.

If someone asked me to read chapter one and then decide if I should buy this book, I'd say: "Absolutely not." It has some of the strangest sentence structuring I've ever seen in my life, and when I first read it I thought maybe I was too tired to understand what was happening, so I slept only to find it was just as confounding. It's not written in academia, that's for sure, but I feel like if there are a lot of people saying "this was confusing" or "this made me feel stupid", it's probably not good.

Even though the following chapters weren't as stunted as the first, there was almost no exposition to the world, just throws some made up words at us and expects us to pretend to understand what's happening until we can finally make a few connections later on (which is great when it comes to mysteries, but not when you're trying to paint a setting, PLEASE). Also the character Flip is completely incongruous with literally everything else, so much so that it feels shallow rather a comic relief character.

Stars for the plot and ideas, but without some heavy editing this book is impossible to read unless you have a massive amount of patience and some aspirin for the guarantied headaches.

This is one of the most thought-provoking, original books I’ve read in a long while. Beginning with humans who enter their own avatar (called an epitome in the book) to go into space or enter the space portal that is at the center of the novel, to creatures such as the kmet, who are gigantic, sloppy, imperious characters whose mode of thought, communication and motivation are obscure, to the final inhabitants of a distant planet, beings who designed the portals, the characters in the novel push the limits of one’s imagination. The plot is original, its unraveling a mystery, probably not completely solved by the book’s end, and the ideas behind it are mind-stretching. It may be the best job, since Stanislau Lem, of demonstrating that the minds of aliens are likely to be completely unlike our own and difficult, if not impossible for humans to understand.

The plot is riveting. Henry, the Arbiter, whose task is to be the only human who communicates with the kmet, who have introduced space portals that allow travel to other planets to humans and who desire to bond with humans in some way, must determine if the kmet’s aim is benign or dangerous to the humans who remain on New Earth. He and Killian, the portal’s pilot, along with a sort-of computer-generated, shape-shifting companion, must visit six planets where New Earth once sent colonists to collect them and bring them back to New Earth before their planets are destroyed by a mysterious force called The Divider. At every turn, Henry and Killian are in some kind of danger and, lurking below the surface is the question of whether The Divider is really the thing they should fear or the kmet, who are urging them to bring all humans back to New Earth in preparation for some kind of merging of the kmet and humans.

The human characters are well-drawn enough for the reader to care about their fate. The mystery remains until the very end of the book. It’s a truly edge-of-your-seat thriller, but with its striking originality of character and place being at the heart of the book’s attraction. I must admit that there is an irritating tendency for the author to use odd contractions and to leave out articles, which I couldn’t tell if they were inadvertent or just an idiosyncratic way for the characters to think or the narrator to express herself, but I got used to them and they didn’t detract enough from the story to interfere with its ability to captivate me throughout.

If a reader wants to encounter real originality in a science fiction space adventure, this novel will fulfill their needs. I couldn’t put it down. I’d never read a Julie E. Czerneda book before and didn’t know she was such a prolific author until I finished the book and looked her up (I’d skipped the list of her books at the beginning of the novel). I definitely will be reading more of her work.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read a pre-publication, uncorrected proof of To Each This World.

I found it difficult to follow what was happening. The writing style was confusing. I liked the premise of humans interrelationship with an alien species but never really understood it.

Absolutely captivating! I could tell from the get-go that this was written by an intelligent, science minded author who has done her research. The first contact was handled in a fresh way, the characters well developed and realistic. A must read for hard science fiction lovers.

I was not able to finish this book. I slogged through the first chapter, but couldn't get past the odd writing style. It seemed like half finished thoughts and sentences. I realize that reading further may have given a reason for the writing style, but I just couldn't follow what was trying to be conveyed.

Pretty good overall. I don't always like her writing style, and I didn't rate her Species Imperative very highly, but lots of others did. The author has a good imagination, and puts it good use here. Probably best for hard sci-fi fans.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

(STARRED REVIEW) New Earth has been safe for centuries in the protective embrace of their alien allies, the Kmet, who insist that all humans must remain on their planet. When they receive a message from a sleeper ship that was sent out before the Kmet came to “protect” them, the Kmet spring into frenetic action to make sure that all humans are still on New Earth. But their methods make the humans question whether the safety the Kmet have provided doesn’t have a more sinister motive and whether they still have both the courage and the capacity to figure out the aliens’ agenda. A political story wrapped in a gigantic puzzle about communication, biological imperatives, and the dangers of ascribing similar motivations to very disparate species, this novel places three singular, unconventionally thinking individuals at the center of a vast and literally earth-shattering story. It explores the search for hope in spite of pragmatism and against all odds and is centered on a willingness to sacrifice self for the possibility of any future at all.VERDICT This stand-alone from Aurora Award–winning Czerneda (Spectrum) is highly recommended for SF readers looking for hopepunk in the midst of both alien and human conspiracies.

Gosh, this book had me feeling so many types of ways throughout its breadth. First of all, I applaud Czerneda for creating a truly groundbreaking kind of sci-fi novel. I felt like my mind expanded its idea of possibility during the reading of this book and I am grateful for that. Second, this book was far too long. I would say it could be cut down by 1/3 and that would greatly benefit the ability of the story to keep the reader's attention. And then there's the matter of the gratuitous use of word contractions, which, far beyond being a "style", actually distracted me from the story, e.g. "I'd a pen" for "I had a pen", etc. It's one thing to use it a few times, but this was constant, employed by most English-speaking characters, including the third person narrator, so much so that it felt off-putting. Outside of those things, I really enjoyed this book & the new worlds that Czerneda built for us to experience through the reading of it.

*Thanks to NetGalley & DAW Books for this ARC, which releases to the world on November 15th, 2022.

I'll admit, I was a little hesitant when I first picked up To Each This World. I'm unsure if I'm more prone to expect more detailed and complicated prose than was first presented, but I struggled through the first few chapters. To Each This World is written in what seems to be a very informal tone: you have a direct line into each character's thoughts in an almost stream-of-consciousness manner. However, I'm glad to say I stuck it out, as I was hooked shortly after.

To Each This World is a galaxy-spanning adventure to save our (new) world and other worlds. The reader embarks on a journey with the characters to uncover the mysteries of lost colonists from a future Earth, only to find themselves on an emotional journey of discovering what it means to be part of a civilization.

To Each This World is a creatively crafted look into what social structures are, our influences on others, the ease in which we can be oblivious to misunderstandings, and just how simple it is to take our similarities for granted. All of this is wrapped up in an expedition to save humanity in whatever far reaches it resides.

Julie E. Czerneda manages to flesh out an exciting universe full of wonder, hope, and mystery while maintaining the excitement and pace of a race against time. This journey across the stars -- however expansive -- reminds us just how close we are and how a little bit of courage and hope have made us thrive as a species.

It's been a long time since I had a physically manifested emotional reaction to the end of a novel, but this one will go down in memory for a long time. I am excited for anyone to read this book, mainly so they might experience the same sense of renewed hope and wonder for humanity and life.

Humans from New Earth with the help of aliens look for ancient sleeper ships on other worlds. Everyone from Earth and other worlds have been destroyed. Were the aliens involved?

Overall this was an enjoyable read with a plot that moved along at a good pace.

Humans on New Earth partner with alien allies to rescue descendants of sleeper ships sent out two hundred years ago from a mysterious threat.

The premise and ending felt reminiscent of a Star Trek episode in the exploration of larger concepts - communicating wth different species, working for the greater good, who and what can you trust - alongside advanced technology with an appreciation for the natural world.

Where it fell flat for me was in mainly in the writing - both prose and how the plot unfolded. A few other reviewers mentioned that the prose was a bit choppy, and there was some unusual use of contractions.

In addition to the prose, there were so many hidden agendas, conspiracy theories, and assumptions being made by the characters without confirmation, that conversations were hard to follow and I never felt like we learned what was really happening.

The last planet visited and the conclusion was a little off in the pacing. The amount of time and detail put into the last planet was substantially more than any of the other worlds, however the ending still felt rushed and I don’t feel like it was fully explained but rather inferred from assumptions made earlier in the novel.

That being said, it was engaging and I enjoyed the experience of reading it. If you are happy to go along for the ride without needing the full picture at the end, it’s worth picking it up.

Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for the eARC.