Summertide

I ran across this one as an audiobook available from my local library. It was the first thing that popped up under the "sci-fi" genre so I thought I'd give it a try. The story is about a diverse group of individuals, human and alien, that are all converging on a single planet at the same time in order to unlock the secrets of an ancient race of aliens known as the Builders. No one knows much about the Builders but they have left a multitude of artifacts behind with technology that even thousands of years later the known races have no way of fathoming. Everyone believes an event of great importance will happen on the planet of Quake at Summertide, but what will it be? What answers, if any, will it give to the mystery of the Builders? This book is a slow-burner for sure. There's really no action until the final act and the climax leaves you with more questions than answers. But with three or four other books in the series, I suppose that's the point. None of the characters particularly pop off the page but the mystery of the Builders was enough to keep me turning the pages (or in this case, to keep listening). Sheffield, who was a mathematician and a physicist before becoming a writer, has some pretty powerful imagery, including a whole section on the mathematical equations of the exertion of tidal forces on the planet Quake that reads like poetry, and more than a few really cool ideas. For instance, the Builder artifact designated Paradox, a giant orb that can be easily entered but upon exit all forms of memory, mechanical or biological, are completely wiped clean. Computers have their memories erased and humans are reverted to the mental state of a newborn child. The world is interesting enough to keep me reading the series.