An interesting book, one that asks a familiar question of what it means to be human and what would a non homo sapien look and think and feel like. Sawyer avoids certain fairly common tropes, though he does fall into a familiar trap of...idolizing, perhaps, the peaceful Neanderthal. Somehow or other, homo sapiens always come off looking particularly nasty and blood-thirsty. We do better than usual in this story.
On the other hand, the Neanderthals have their moments when their style of living and the things they are willing to sacrifice recast the tradeoff and make us wonder.
I had a few objections to the story - some of the humans were rather flat compared to the Neanderthals and behaved in a manner that made me wonder where exactly all their animation was - but I was, overall, impressed with Sawyer's storytelling and enjoyed his version of "What would a different "people" be like?"