Not quite sure why this didn't quite work for me. It's an interesting premise, but the chopping between the two teams and occasional asides to the downworlders didn't quite keep the plot moving fast enough and became confusing.

The scenario is that of a first contact team, arriving on world centuries after a plague sundered the human empire. Only about 1 in 5 colonies have survived and the team members carry their own issues from prior excursions. The world has split into at least two factions who are fighting for control over a landmass terraformed to aid human survival. The world itself is hostile, with alien proteins causing genetic damage. The small contact team splits into two groups working with each faction to try to understand the path of the plague, and equally to enable the colony to join the confederation. It's not clear how much of the landmass is occupied as we only ever deal with a few individuals.

The characterisation works quite well although there are too many characters. I liked the magnetic personality of the powerful, and crippled, leader of one faction, but never really emphasised with any of the away team members, they all seemed to have opaque motivations. From the other faction which was culturally more interesting, having divided their society up into technological based castes, there was no clear voice and it all became muddled.

Part of the difficulty is that not only does the reader have to struggle with the split teams and their various viewpoints, but also that of the downworlders and their politics and factions never really become clear. I'm fairly sure the author fully understood how that world worked, but they never quite managed to explain it to the reader.

Interesting but not quite well enough written to prompt further exploration of the series. ( )