Rating: 
Summary: Just plain terrible.
Review: I read the first book. Like, read it, on paper. I enjoyed it. So, on a whim, I picked up the sequel to Darwin's Radio on the iTunes Music Store. Boy, it was just awful.First off, the person reading the book is trying way too hard to do all kinds of voices -- latina women, black women, old men, old women, young girls -- and detracts entirely from the flow of the book. It's very difficult to be paying attention to the book itself when the narrator keeps speaking in tongues. As for the book itself, the plot is much more like a romance novel. Thin, lacking detail. Plot devices are cliche and predictable. About half an hour into this book, I knew exactly what was going to happen, simply by the way the author laid things out. It seems to me that the ending of the first book left a lot open. Sometimes, that's a good thing. It leaves the reader to chew on what the author is trying to convey. It allows open-ended thought on the subject. In the case of Darwin's Radio, this is definitely a good thing. However, it also seems that this book was some compulsory thing Mr. Bear did because there was .. I dunno, need from his readerbase to "finish the story"? This is clearly the work of small minds. To take these characters off into all these spurious thread-cleaning-up adventures at the expense of the reader's time and money is just criminal. Sometimes, well enough is well enough alone. If you must read this book, borrow the paper copy. The audiobook is not worth the time or money, and the book isn't either. At least the paper won't be attempting some inflected southern accent.
Rating:
Summary: One star is too generous
Review: I read this novel in the misguided hope that it would improve as it went on. It did not. I honestly can't think of a single thing that would make this book worth a read. The characters are like cartoon representations of people. The so-called plot is all over the place. My personal "favorite" is the scientist who thinks she's having a religious epiphany, and seeks to confirm this with a CAT scan. Between the pseudo-scientific pycho-babble and the deteriorating plot line, I'm amazed this book was even published. Unless you need paper to start a fire, try a different book.
Rating: 
Summary: I finished it, but don't know why I bothered.
Review: I usually like Greg Bear's work, but "Darwin's Children" was surprisingly dull. A lot of talk, not many new ideas (just rehash of the genetic stuff in "Darwin's Radio"), uninvolving characters, and a strangely irrelevant Divine Intervention. Plowing through this book felt like a tedious homework assignment. It's a case of competent storytelling without much to say. I was also a little annoyed at an undertone stuck solidly in A.D. 2003: Bear takes swipes at Fox News, the Evil Republicans, American voters as sheep. Hey, I'm a Democrat, too, but I see enough of this political sniping in the real world. The best science fiction weaves social commentary into the plot and assumes the reader is intelligent enough to make their own comparisons to current events.
Rating: 
Summary: A spark missing
Review: I'd enjoyed Greg Bear's fisrt novel in this series, Darwin's Radio, tremendously - evolution, physical anthropology and neaderthals, with a new race of humans being born. What's not to like? In Darwin's Children, the first generation of new humans are growing up, and there's enormous government tension engendered by their presence, the fear of them as a contagious virus that needs to be contained, etc. (In the real world, I suspect the response to 'new' humans would be far more savage and deadly, but perhaps the author didn't want to go there.) Mitch and Kay, and their new human daughter Stella, are key protagonists in this novel, but not the only players: every chapter in the book switches - irritatingly - from one character point of view to another. As is so often the case with science fiction, the science becomes the protagonist, with the human characters often little more than mouthpieces for lengthy disserations on various scientifica topics - in this book for example, evolutonary and viral biology (though Bear provides a glossary at the back for the jargon-challenged). I suppose this would have all been fine, except nothing really happens in Darwin's Children. There are tensions. Stella grows up. Mitch and Kay have relationship issues. There's a very touching archaeological find of mixed races buried in 30,000 years of old lava (CAN two races of humanoids work together???). Oh, and Kay has an epiphany - which is all very interesting - but ultimately has little bearing on either the story or the development of Kay's character. In short, after rushing out to buy the book in hardcover, I was left feeling flat. Perhaps this was a book Bear didn't want to write anyway - but his publisher made him....
Rating: 
Summary: An excellant near-future thriller
Review: I'm writing this review of Darwin's Children, but it actually applies to both that work, and the one preceeding it, Darwin's Radio. Both are great science fiction stories that go beyond the genre, and would interest fans of human-interest fiction as well. The novels deal with an iconoclastic evolutionary theory (turning out to be right in the story, of course) which challenges the neo-Darwinian scenario of a slow process of natural selection taking place over eons. In the new theory, very briefly, portions of the "junk DNA" in organisms, including humans, can respond to sufficient stresses in the environment to bring about a new genotype in the off-spring of a species at a very rapid rate. The story deals with the effects on society and the individuals involved, when increasing numbers of these upgrade humans are born.
The trauma faced by society as a whole, who's leaders mistakenly believe that these children pose a disease risk to the society, is exceeded by that of the parents, who find their children forcibly taken away from them, often without any follow-up word on where they are, or what their condition is. And the new children themselves have to deal with a world that seems to resent their existance, forced into concentration camp type "schools", and kept there even after evidence clearly indicates there is no danger, for reasons of political expediency.
The two main characters, Kaye and Mitch, and their daughter Stella, one of the Homo Sapiens Novus, contend with forces seemingly beyond their control, trying to keep their family together, and to help bring about a more humane response to the new type of human being in our midst. The story,again including both books, is genetically informative, suspensful, and very moving. Get both books and read them as a single work. I highly recommend both of them!
Rating: 
Summary: Darwin's Legacy
Review: I've been a fan of Greg Bear for sometime, it started, I think, with Eon. Like Orson Scott Card, another favourite, Bear writes stories about people, draped over a science fiction setting, driven by the same emotions as us all. In that regard, Darwin's Children doesn't disappoint; there's no escaping Mitch and Kaye's love for their daughter and each other, tested as it may be. After finishing Darwin's Radio, I was hesitant to pick up the sequel. I found Darwin's Radio to be cluttered with genetics 101 to the point of losing the story. Darwin's Children doesn't make that mistake. It finds a better balance of story and science. I read on the web that the book will soon be turned into a movie, which surprises me, as there's very little in the book that would seem attractive to Hollywood. It's a great read that gives pause. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: I have no idea what I just read
Review: Is it a Sci-fi book or a thriller? I honestly do not know. Ok. The book is divided into three parts First part-Pretty good-Bounty hunters hunting kids, God that is terrifying
Second Part- Good, but sort of odd first it's a sci-fi book and then Mitch spends the rest of the book digging up the bodies of nedandersals? Help me out please I'm a dumb history major(who enjoys a good sci-fi book) and I could never get past the lingo. Thank God they provided a dictionary at the end of the book or I would have been totally lost. Third Part-Really Really odd-I mean this is the weirdest part of the book you have to read it know what I mean everything was wrapped up too fast. It seemed sort of
anti-chlimatic. Parts of this book are great, you have the SHIVA parents that want what is best for there kids fighting the good fight against overwhelming odds. But somewhere along the line something just falls apart and you will find yourself skipping whole pages with no impact on the story.
Overall-This book is not bad, but big scientific words were used and it also feels like there a million different stories going on all at once. I mean for God's sake Mr. Bear pick a character, pick a plot line
Overall grade-C+
Rating:
Summary: Republicans?
Review: Not really a review, just a reaction to that idiot who raves about anti-republicanism. Wow, this is proof-positive of what we 'liberals' are talking about. And instead of taking the book to the dump, why not just burn, it as your soulmates in pre-WWII Germany did!!! The parallels between Bush and Hitler become more compelling every day!
Rating:
Summary: The Death Throes of a Formerly Healthy Career
Review: Prior to 1997, Greg Bear had written some of the best big-concept hard sci-fi in the genre. For some reason, after the publication of Slant, he decided he was through with sci-fi, and went on to write more accessible works. And accessible this is! Once you get past the concept that there exists a group of mutant children who talk to each other with their freckles, you've got a run-of-the-mill medical mystery clearly aimed at mass-market acceptance.
Regardless of what you think of Mr. Bear's career direction (i.e., striving to become the next Michael Creighton or Robin Cook), Darwin's Children has a large number of faults with the prose itself.
First off, the book is just flat-out boring. There are no new or interesting ideas presented above what was introduced in Darwin's Radio. Likewise, the book's few major events could have been compressed into a volume about one-third the size. However, plenty of space is given over to turgid descriptions of people's outfits and clumsy inner monologues. There is a limit to how many times you can read "They've taken my child!" before the intended effect wears off.
What's worse is that the book devotes entire chapters to politics and political wrangling. If reading about testifying in front of congressional subcommittees sounds exciting, this might be the book for you.
On the other hand, characterization is kept to a minimum. Almost all the characters in the book are wooden, and by the end of the novel you're left with - at best - apathy towards them. However, one protagonist (Kaye) is such a selfish princess that you'll wish you could reach through page and slap some sense into her.
Perhaps the book's biggest flaw is the injection of religion / mysticism into the storyline. It would appear that Mr. Bear has "found God" - or at least had some profound religious experience in real life - and wants to make sure you know it. The "can't we all just get along" ending is also rather heavy-handed and serves as a perfect anticlimax to this sad volume.
Do yourself a favor, and pick up a copy of Wil McCarthy's excellent "Lost in Transmission" for some great ideas and fresh storytelling. Or go back and read "Eon" or "Anvil of Stars" again - reading Darwin's Children will only serve to disappoint.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Radio was pretty good (3 or 4 stars), but I was very disappointed with Children. It seemed to be hastily thrown together to meet a deadline.
The book has three parts. In the first section, the evil government has suspended civil liberties for the Virus Children and their families. I did not buy it, and did not appreciate the political ranting. Then the second part was three years later and it seemed like what happened in the first part made no difference. So then why did he write about it?
Mitch helped make some farfetched discoveries at a dig. Kaye learned how viruses work, and had a spiritual awakening. None of that seemed to have any effect on resolving the story. The situation with the Sheva children seemed to resolve itself based on a change in the political cycle. The whole story seemed pointless.
I would have rather learned more about the Children and their new social structures. How will they learn to adapt to the outside world? Will there be conflict between the Shevites who were raised by old human families and those who lived together?
How will the second generation babies be different? How will the general public learn to live with the new humans?
Greg Bear, you wrote the wrong book. I didn't want to read your paranoid story of the evil (Republican) government. I wanted the Children.
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