Rating: 
Summary: Infinity means you never reach the shore...
Review: Despite my reviews' title, I did like this book. However, I liked its predecessor Brightness Reef better, and Startide Rising better yet. This book took far too long to bring the storylines all together. One character in particular, Asx, took until about page 100 to stop reminiscing on what happened in the last book and move on to this story. Furthermore, each story line would be presented for 1-3 pages, then Brin would shift focus to another storyline. Lastly, some of the coincidences seem too fantastic- like most of Dwer's adventures. Other than a major cliffhanger tied up with ruminations and secrets not shared with the reader in this book, it was still a good book which I would recommend. Of course, if you want to finish the Uplift story, it is a requirement....
Rating:
Summary: Infinity means you never reach the shore...
Review: Despite my reviews' title, I did like this book. However, I liked its predecessor Brightness Reef better, and Startide Rising better yet. This book took far too long to bring the storylines all together. One character in particular, Asx, took until about page 100 to stop reminiscing on what happened in the last book and move on to this story. Furthermore, each story line would be presented for 1-3 pages, then Brin would shift focus to another storyline. Lastly, some of the coincidences seem too fantastic- like most of Dwer's adventures. Other than a major cliffhanger tied up with ruminations and secrets not shared with the reader in this book, it was still a good book which I would recommend. Of course, if you want to finish the Uplift story, it is a requirement....
Rating: 
Summary: Brin finally back on his game!
Review: Having a Brin fan for many years, I routinely hit the book stores looking for new releases, unfortunately, the last couple of books that I picked up, Glory Season and Brightness Reef, were not up the same standards that his books have always met. Infinity's Shore gets an 8, which is high for me. Those other two were 5 or lower. Brin has always had for me the ability to present completly alien forms and minds in a fashion that is comprehensible to human mind. In Startide Rising and the Uplift war, I could feel and understand what a dolphin might think looking into the porthole on a submarine, or chimp peeking at Jane Goodall through the trees. Infinity's Shore finally returned to Brin's great strength of telling an alien story from a human point of view. He is the master of interleaving his books, and if you are going to read Infinity's Shore, do yourself a favor and start out with Sundiver. Work your way through the entire Uplift series. That's a lot of reading, but it is well worth it to get the whole picture in place! Infinity's Shore will leave you wishing for the final installment of the current series, but hopefully we won't have to wait much longer! I think release is scheduled for the end of this year!
Rating: 
Summary: Gosh darn it, where's Book Three?
Review: I ordered a copy of this book, in paperback, from Amazon.com several months ago, as I was anxious to resume this story from where it had been left at the end of Book One. This trilogy is set in David Brin's Uplift universe, which was previously outlined in his novels "Sundiver", "Startide Rising", and "The Uplift War". This trilogy continues the story of the crew of the star ship "Streaker" and it's cargo of humans and sentient dolphins and secrets, while they try to escape pursuit and effect repairs by hiding out on a fallow planet. The secrets they bear are the root cause of their pursuit, and of the intergalactic war currently being waged against humanity. Unexpectedly, the fallow planet is not uninhabited, but contains illegal settlers from many different races, and the interactions between the settlers, the crew of the "Streaker", the pursuers, and the planet are complex. Here David Brin is continuing his complex storytelling style a la the award-winning "Startide Rising". The many characters represent many different viewpoints, not all of which remain static. His descriptions of the setting are evocative. I think it's fair to say that if you enjoyed his previous Uplift novels, and have read the first book in the trilogy, you'll quite enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Kiquis on Streaker???
Review: I share with other readers the deepest admiration of David Brin's wonderful Uplift saga...and eagerly await the publication of Heaven's Reach...while biding my time until the release of the new novel, I've been reading and rereading Startide Rising, Brightness Reef, and Infinity's Shore. Now I discover that I have a nagging question: at the end of Startide Rising, Dennie and Toshio loaded a group of presentient Kiquis onto Streaker's skiff, plucked Tom Orley off Kithrup, and haven't been heard from since. Presumably we will learn their fate in Heaven's Reach. My question, though, is this: where did Gillian's population of Kiquis come from??? At the end of Inifinity's Shore, the Streaker crew off-loaded a population of Kiquis before departing Jijo...I can find no reference to Kiquis boarding Streaker in Startide Rising. Anybody got an answer?
Rating:
Summary: Give me more! I'm hooked.
Review: I'm a David Brin fan. I like everything he writes. So it's only natural that this book would be an instant hit.
I agree with the other reviewers. It starts off rather slow. It sometimes dips into a sophmoric level only to rise to a more meaningful tale. David makes the reader look at diversity and try to make us realize that a great society is possible when its life forms appreciate the parts can become greater than the whole.
The characters are enjoyable. There's humor and sadness and thrilling tales of the unimaginable as we progress through this great Brin story.
Best of all, similar to David's other uplift stories, this book is fun to read and think about.
The dolphins, nonetheless, steal the show.
Rating:
Summary: Part two delivers
Review: In this second novel of David Brin's Uplift Storm trilogy, the society of outlaw races on Jijo are thrown into further chaos with the arrival of the super-powerful Jophur, a hostile race of alien conquerors. We are reintroduced to the crew of Streaker, who plot their escape from under the nose of their fearsome adversaries. This novel suffers from the same problem as most middle works in a trilogy: having neither a true beginning nor a true ending, it exists as nothing but middle that goes on and on, often seeming quite meandering. Only when the final novel has been read is it possible to judge just how essential are the plot elements included here. That said, this series remains immensely enjoyable. It is always fun to see a talented author create a richly detailed world and then turn it upside down, letting the chips fall where they may. The story takes a while to get going, as Brin spends about the first seventy pages having characters do little more than contemplate the events of the first novel. I benefited from this since it had been quite a while since I had read the previous installment, but it seems like that could have been tightened up a bit. I look forward to reading the next book and hope that Brin chooses to revisit this universe some day. (How about the lost adventures of the Streaker? Quite a few significant events have happened off stage.)
Rating:
Summary: Too much for it to be really good
Review: Just finished reading the book. I had the hardest time starting it, i would read it for a while then put it down because it was boring. I liked his 'old' writing style better than this one. It is like he took some poetry class and decided every line had to be some wonderful prose. He also has too many characters, quite a few of wich i didnt care about! He doesnt get to develop all the characters because there are just too many. But i do like the Uplift universe a lot, so overall i liked the story - just found it long and somewhat boring.
Rating:
Summary: Good to see the Streaker again but....
Review: Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Mr. Brins work, and I was thrilled to finally find out what became of the Streaker and her crew...but...I feel this story is dragging on. There are too many characters, too much going on and too much bouncing back and forth. I also get the "Oh come on.." feeling in some parts of not only this book but back in Brightness Reef too. DeapSea diving in a hollowed out tree trunk? A planet that is somehow "alive", left with the imprints of a long gone race? I just get the feeling Brin is grasping at straws with some of the concepts and the scientific plausibility of some of his ideas. Everything he describes may be possible, who knows, but how many of his readers are quantum or astro physicists? There seems to be a lot "how" left unexplaned that makes the reader think "Ahh..that's crazy". On the other hand, though, I have enjoyed the new series and its large cast thus far and am axiously awating the next installment. Those who have not read Startide Rising will probably be quite satisfied. It's a good tale in all. Brin has the amazing ability to make you care deeply for, loath or hate his characters the way few other authors can do. I wonder how many readers just want to slap Rety into next Tuesday or were angered and upset when Kaa looses his love to fellow fins who, weary of the chase, kidnap her and strike out on thier own. I think anyone who is a fan of the Uplift books will be happy, even with it's faults I find it still to be one of those novels I have a hard time putting down.On a personal note: (I wonder if Mr. Brin will read this at some point :) ) I would much rather have had a series that dealt with the Streaker alone. I was always irritated to no end that Startide Rising was a stand alone novel, it left you wanting to know what happens next? Where did the Streaker go? Startide was an enthralling novel and an extreamly emotional one to many of those who read it...I think Infinitys shore is a good book in that we finnaly find out what happend, but it leaves me dissapointed just the same. The Streaker has been on the run for over two years and we are constantly fed little bits of the adventure she had before comming to Jijo. Brin has a nasty habit of dropping you into the 'middle' of the story. With Startide we were only told of discovery Streaker made second hand, we were not there when it happened, you get the feeling that you've started reading the second book in a series. In infinitys shore it's the same way, we are only told of whats happend in last two years by the memories of some of Streakers crew. Call me picky but I want to be there when they discover the mamonth fleet of dead ships, I want to be there when they are ambushed, I want to be there with them when they left Kithrup! I want to know what happened to Tom Orley and the others left behind in a tiny scoutship! I can only hope that some day Brin wil start his stories from the start and will stop introducing us to an army of new characaters and tell us what happended to some of the old ones whome he left in a cliffhanger.. whome he left in the 'where are they now?' file. I mean, geesh, he'll only have to change his entire style of writing, is that asking so much? ;)
Rating:
Summary: Where's the starships!!!
Review: Of course, the book is a must read for Uplift fans ! But this new series lack something from the earlier series. In Startide Rising, Brin uses an excellent method of combining action on the surface with the space battles in orbit. But now that Streaker and her crew has arrived, there's bound to be some of that in the final book. Personally i can't wait to read it!!!
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