2/5⭐ This book felt like a filler installment. Sure some things happened, mostly in the research on Hivers, but otherwise progress was slow, and the end just dragged more and more. There was problematic treatment of women, the series' first gay character, and matchmaking efforts. Also minor continuity discrepancies that either disagreed with other books/pages in the series or seemed to accidentally draw details from other of McCaffrey's series.