Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer is the second book I still had from the library that had some time still to go before it had to be returned (at least that was the case... sure hope I'm right that they're due back on the 1st otherwise I'll owe a couple bucks. I know that's not much, but I'd really rather not throw away dollars for no reason. A penny saved is a penny earned. "What's a penny?" Bah! Get out with this, you stupid kids today). It was recommended to me as an example of great science fiction that also happened to be written by a Canadian, thereby making this "Great Canadian Science Fiction".

I read through it much quicker than expected. Does that mean it's a good book? Well, ah, obviously reading through a book fast doesn't make it "great". Ah, man- I've really given myself a load of terms to unpack here. Wait, no I didn't, just the definition of good and whether it correlates to how fast a book can be read. Also, I said "good" first, then "great".

Anyways, I've talked about this book to a bunch of people because you get to learn a lot of possible facts about neanderthals. Wait, okay, I should get you up to speed on what this book is about: one parallel Earth had neanderthals be the dominant species, another Earth (presumably "our" Earth) had homo sapiens get the top job. When a quantum physicist neanderthal accidentally gets zapped to our Earth, he and his hand wrist A.I. have to acclimate to life on a new strange Earth, all the while his partner back in his home reality has been accused of the guys murder. And yes, I'll spoil it now, the book gets to pull the cliche "and who will be defending the accused?" "I will." aaand cue the supposedly murdered victim.

Okay, so good book? Well, I've likened it to an episode of the Magic School Bus: very informative on the topic of current genetic and anthropological theories concerning neanderthal's circa 2002 (maybe they've made some new discovery that would make everything in this book a giant waste of time, I don't know), but no actual story. Certainly not 400 pages of story. And the print was awful big. Really, this was a 150-200 page novel stretched out with science tid bits and superfluous Canadiana.

And I can't really explain that assertion as much as I'd like because I've run out of time and need to go to work. Maybe next installment I'll keep going. Probably not.