Gripping for the first 7/8, especially if you are familiar with the earlier novels of the trilogy. Tchaikovsky manages to join, in one novel, the space opera genre (new planets, new technologies, faster than light travel!), with the Ursula Le Guin careful anthropological detail about a small community, and a reader favorite, the looped story with slight variations generating the feeling in the characters and reader at the same time that “something is not right.” The corvids are a great innovation. The aliens are right here, if we take the proper time perspective and have a rich enough imagination (echos of Ted Chiang’s parrot short story?). But that last 1/8 was a hot mess in my opinion… maybe really careful reading would uncover what Tchaikovsky was doing, but I just found it poorly edited.