Rating: 
Summary: Disagree
Review: ..I found Iris to be a compelling read, and its characters to be a fully realized set of people with foibles, problems, neuroses, and -- gasp -- sex lives. That is not to say that Iris is pornographic; far from it. But the character are adults, and the book manages to convey a sense of the tangle of personalities that would result from the extended close contact of ten people on a lengthy interplanetary flight. And then, on top of all that, comes a VR encounter with an alien intelligence! A worthwhile read, no question about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Very few, almost-original, somewhat interesting ideas
Review: Extremely overly-technical story about a group of people who discover the relics of an ancient intelligence while exploring a rogue planet near Neptune. No likable characters.
Rating:
Summary: Can't I give it 0 stars?
Review: I couldn't even make it to the hundred page mark. There are better mysterious space object books out there. There are better troubled artist books out there. There are better sex books out there. There are better unsympathetic character books out there.
Don't be fooled by the blurb comparing this to Samuel R. Delaney. Barton & Capobianco aren't even close to being in his league.
Rating:
Summary: Don't start here...
Review: I tried, I really did. I'd read and loved all of Barton's 90's solo work, had found White Light subpar but still worthwhile, but I just couldn't finish this--I did manage to slog through nearly two-hundred pages in ten days, but I usualy read a few books over that kind of stretch. I can handle slower-paced novels, denser pieces, but this is simply too heavy-handed stylistically, with too little reward for the reader. After 100 pages, nothing has actually happened--oh yeah, the characters thought about sex alot--no plot advancement had occured, nothing meaningful had been exposed... It just went on and on with little point. And there were what felt like a dozen interchangeable characters. At 200, things were much the same, and I still couldn't tell any of the characters apart. Too big, too complex, too slowly paced, poorly characterised... As an aspiring writer, I hate to slag a work like this, but please, stay away. Barton is a highly talented and important author, and he is largely ignored (this book, his first of note, may have something to do with that). Grab one of his solo efforts; Acts of Conscience and When We Were Real are still in print, and are two of his best.
Rating:
Summary: Not a Good Read
Review: I'm a hardcore SF fan the authors seem too interested in the physical lives of there characters. I like the premise of the novel but I wouldn't recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: IRIS is Awful
Review: I'm an avid SF fan and even had the patience to suffer through these authors' earlier work, Alpha Centauri. I had no such stamina for this book. I seldom do this, but I couldn't finish it. "Directionless characters" is the understatement of the week: the entire book, but for a bare outline of a rather silly plot, is directionless. Over and over: go exploring; have sex; have sex; go exploring, etc. And everyone in the book so endlessly hung up on the routine! Who cares. Buy some other book. Don't waste your time and money on this one. I gave IRIS one star because Amazon won't accept zero stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Blech...
Review: Iris has an interesting theme, but it is just not executed well. The authors seem to be overly obsessed with the character's sexual lives, as there is such an encounter every 3 pages. Overall, I can't recommend this book to anyone in good faith.
Rating: 
Summary: THIS IS A GREAT BOOK!
Review: Iris is a challenging and complex and RICHLY REWARDING read. The characters are truly unique--and some are quite unsavory--and the science and speculations that surround their story are fascinating. There are at least three scenes as awesome and colorful as any I've read.
Rating:
Summary: I kept reading 'cause the hoped the characters would die
Review: IRIS is perhaps the worst book I've ever finished (I had to complete it for a review). What totally killed it for me were the characters -- I've read books with unsympathetic characters before, but never one populated exclusively with them. And it's something of a tragedy, because the plot itself is fairly compelling. It's bad enough that the characters argue constantly, have bad sex every few pages, and eventually elect the most repugnant of them as leader. But when they finally discover the first ancient alien ship and literally punch buttons at random until the priceless relic destroys itself, I wanted to hurl the book across the room. The bulk of the novel is taken up with the crew's desperate attempt to reach a second (and much larger) alien craft buried on IRIS. Why is there such desperate tension? Because there's a ship on the way from Earth, and the crew knows that when it arrives they won't be allowed near the alien craft. No kidding! After what these criminals did to the first one, I wouldn't have allowed them near a toaster oven. I kept reading in the vain hope that the Earth ship would arrive and stop them. I'm not happy I did. Don't make my mistake -- try one of the authors' other novels, such as Act of Conscience or Burster -- instead.
Rating:
Summary: Big Words, Big Sex, Little of Interest
Review: OK -- I'm only 100 pages into this book and wanted to checksome reviews. BINGO! Here we go again with SF writers trying toswitch to the romance genre.... Heinlein had sex in his stories in the "and they went to a room and came back smiling" -type descriptions. All this head-bobbing, bodily fluid descriptions and such just have no place in "hard core" SF (wait a minute... perhaps THAT'S what genre they're tyring for!) I put the Chung-Kuo series aside for it's overly dark sexual passages (just DON'T need those kinds of images floating in my head...) and I'm rapidly getting fed up with IRIS as well. I've only stopped reading FOUR books in a 15 year SF reading career! I sense a fifth coming... That said, the adventure itself is somewhat interesting -- and in it's defense, what the heck are you going to do on a deserted island anyway? I understand the use of sexual experiences for character development/motivations and all (and that was Chung Kuo's purpose perhaps, to show the sorid nature of the society) and the same perhaps is true for IRIS. It's social commentary, adult interaction and so forth, sure -- I personally just don't enjoy the very graphic nature of it. Heinlein handled it quite well I think... George Lucas' "Star Wars" is similar -- there's "sexual tension" with Han/Leia but we don't have to follow them into the room and under the sheets... I keep coming back to the old Star Trek true-ism -- Why is ST so popular with "nerds/geeks" Engineers and Techies? Because it's about engineers and scientists being hero's and having sex with aliens! Are SF readers really this desperate? But then again, I don't watch Star Trek either... And then, there's the Big Words -- hey, these guys know a little about Science I would say! And that's great, I love to learn while reading -- but it comes with a flavor of disdain/contempt for the common reader. You either know you're sciences or you're lost in this book... One of my favorite passages though is their concept of "Colony Set-Up" -- a really well thought out little colony is created and I really admired the thought and theory behind it -- one of the best and, surprise, easiest to understand (maybe because I've read up a little more on this matter...) But shucks, they only set up the colony to have sex in it I guess... YAWN!
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