The best of the New Earth subseries thus far, and a vast improvement on the last two volumes. Rusch's book succeeds where they failed; that there are no problems with pacing is a great relief and makes for a far less stodgy reading experience. Similarly, this story isn't padded out with repetition and waffle... it's just a short tight novel with a clear focus, with characters taking centre stage instead of technobabble. I do think there's some failure with the science, and not enough focus on how the remaining ecology will respond to the suffocation resulting from the attack on the soil - plant cells need to respire, and they're not going to recover as easily as Thin Air suggests after being deprived of atmosphere for so long, for example - but even so it's a readable, likeable book.