I was happy to find a story set outside of the human perspective, but I also found it intriguing how human everyone sounded. I find it amusing that most intelligent species seem to develop following the same basic patterns of milestones: "to flourish, make contact, develop, expand, reach a steady state and then eventually Sublime was more or less the equivalent of the stellar Main Sequence for civilizations" 198. Even though humans arrived late to the party, to join the galactic club of the Involved, it feels as thought they are part of the greater tradition of intelligent races in the universe. I like that feeling.
It does however start to dilute the alienness of anyone in the book. It has been very easy for me to just anthropomorphize these aliens, turning them into humans. I keep having to remind myself that this or that character has three legs. I actually have two different mental images of Quilan, one human and one.... whatever. I think there's a possibility that the sheer number of species in this book could possibly take away from the experience. On a more profound note, it could be instead a dilution of the term "humanity" because that is now just a drop in the bucket of all the aliens out there.
This book makes me wonder how long it would have taken for civil war to break out on Rakhat, or if indeed that sort of cataclysm only happens when "Culture" steps in to make things right
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