There's an interesting story here, but the pacing is badly off; the first half of the book is very slow, and the last forty pages or so are crammed with plot and surprise twists, before the whole thing abruptly ends mid-stream, with nothing to be resolved until the sequel (Migration, published earlier this summer).
Our heroine is Mackenzie "Mac" Connor, who studies salmon at a wildlife refuge in the Pacific Northwest. Her routine is interrupted by the arrival of Brymn, the first member of the Dhryn race to have visited Earth. There has been a series of catastrophic attacks, wiping out all life on several different planets, and Brymn believes that Mac's expertise in biology may help him figure out who's responsible. Mac doesn't see how she can be of help, and is reluctant to leave her research, but when her best friend is kidnapped by the race that is the principal suspect in the attacks, she has no choice but to join Brymn.
I'm getting really sick of SF novelists who insist on breaking up one story into two or three volumes without providing any warning to the reader that the first volume is not a stand-alone story. But I liked the characters, and the Dhryn are an interesting race, with customs and culture different enough from our own to feel believably alien. The questions Czerneda's left hanging here have me curious enough that I will probably pick up the sequel, and hope that the story is actually finished there.
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