A fascinating adventure story that I did very much enjoy. Bob, a professor, and Jessica, a government worker, are thrown together while working on a scientific project to harvest a poisonous anemone that the project's director, Bobowski, hopes can be used for medicinal purposes. A romance blossoms between them, but it would have been nice to see more internals on why they liked each other. They had a few funny moments in which they laughed at each other's jokes and shared literary references, but it wasn't enough to make me believe in the relationship especially considering how many pages were spent covering their sea journey--there was a lot of missed opportunity.

Overall that was my biggest problem with the book. It dragged on when introducing new scenes, new technology, and descriptions, and skipped over essential characterizations. The big-reveal ending seemed a little forced simply because the characters weren't strong enough for me to feel the joy I expected to feel at that point. I also felt like I missed some of the references--I got the Hitchhiker's Guide reference and laughed, but a few of the references to old tv shows went right over my head and I think it made it harder for me to get into the characters. A few more context clues would have helped.

Mego does a great job of setting the stage, and the complex political relationships were fascinating. I loved reading about the conservation aspects of the story; you could easily see what is wrong with our world today without being hit over the head with it. As a diver myself I would have liked to see more of their explorations underwater (and I was a little bothered that he used positive buoyancy instead of neutral buoyancy, but there were a few typos like that scattered throughout that could be cleaned up in another printing).

I am definitely looking forward to the sequel.