Unfortunately, this book just did not work for me. The initial excitement at getting to read/listen to one of Larry Niven's books was very quickly shot down. The characters in the book were very unlikeable, and surprisingly inept for proclaimed "experts'. For the most part (like 70%) the story felt like a bunch of teenagers surviving in the wilderness based on how they acted, and their inability to not think about sex. Oh god, the amount of times sex is brought up. Not to mention the lack of anything coherent when it comes to the descriptions of the alien species and their technology. New things just keep popping up. There's even a part where the characters reference science fiction tropes as being unrealistic. The irony.

The Bowl of Heaven, while actually having an interesting premise, does not deliver in terms of the characters or the plot. It also didn't help that this book ends fairly abruptly. I'm hoping a lot more is cleared up in the books that follow this in the series, but with a first book like this, I do not see myself continuing this series.

In the book Bowl of Heaven, authors Gregory Benford and Larry Niven write about a group traveling from earth to colonize a new planet. On the way they discover a giant bowl and stop to discover what it is doing in space. But the exploration of the bowl begins with problems and ends with…. Have to wait for the next book. This was a good story concept but there were a lot of contradictions and characters personalities were all over the place. And it was long. This book needs to be edited and shortened. Not sure if I will try the next book in the series. The audio-book narration was very good. I received a copy of this audio-book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My thanks to Tantor Audio for recording audiobooks of older novels like this one that were not previously available. This first book in a sci-fi trilogy is from 2012, yet parts of it read like it's from 1972. The authors take great pains to have two consenting adults discuss how they would like to have sex without requiring love, as they are married to others (who are in a cryogenic sleep state back on the spaceship). This discussion happens more than once. By 2012, the concept of friends with benefits had been around for at least a decade, so this dialogue hardly seems futuristic or necessary. Also, a character commented with awe about how such an attractive woman (trained as a pilot) could pilot a ship. Seriously? Other than this type of chauvinistic writing, the story is fine. A huge, planet-sized "ring" is discovered with lots of different forms of life. It seemed to be the women who suggest that the team doesn't need to shoot first.... Thank goodness we have many more voices writing sci-fi these days. The old masters were fine in their time, but need to partner with younger and more diverse writers to stay relevant.
My thanks to the authors, publisher, @TantorAudio, and #NetGalley for access to the audiobook #BowlofHeaven for review purposes. It's a fine "big unknown object in the sky" mystery with interesting aliens. Excellent narration of the audiobook.

(Advance Listening Copy courtesy of NetGalley and Tantor Audio.)

<b>A solid 4⭐️</b>

This book delivered <b>two of the most interesting ideas I’ve ever read in science fiction</b>, and only ONE of them was spoiled in the marketing material—which I appreciated. (No, I will not be elaborating, for spoiler reasons.)

The aliens in this book operate in a completely different moral paradigm than the humans, but the narrative doesn’t hand-wave that into “they’re just evil.” Their behavior is consistent with their own worldview, and that nuance was refreshing.

If you’re here for romance, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong place. There are some sex-of-convenience scenes, but not romance. (And I don’t think the authors were aiming for that anyway.) And speaking of the authors: there were times where I found myself stopping to wonder what each author brought to the narrative, but this was my own musing and wasn’t prompted by the kind of clunky prose you sometimes get when you have two writers at the helm. The work felt seamless.

One area where the story struggled was in the likeability of the characters. It felt like the authors leaned hard into making the characters “real,” at the expense of making them “enjoyable.” That said, the plot more than made up for it—but it would have been a 5⭐ read for me if I’d felt more invested in the cast.

As for the ending: I found myself saying, <i>“And just like that, it was over…”</i> It was abrupt and nothing was resolved. Still, the story is ambitious enough to justify that kind of close. Guess I'll be picking up the next in the series!

🎧 AUDIO-SPECIFIC
James R. Cheatham is an excellent narrator who brought strong, distinct voices to the story. I never struggled to tell who was speaking. My only minor complaint is that his pace was just a touch slow for my taste. It wasn’t overly frustrating; I just bumped the playback up .25x over my normal preferred listening speed, and even then, only near the end of the book.

TL;DR -- An ambitious and idea-driven dual-author work, perfect for fans of hard sci-fi. But if you can’t stand loose ends, you'll need to pick up the other titles in the series for answers, because they aren't found here.