Hugo Nominee 2008 Book #2
For brevity's sake, I've cut and pasted a synopsis from the Amazon.com site from Publisher's Weekly: Astronomer Sarah Halifax, who translated the first message from aliens and helped prepare humanity's response, is 87 when the second, encrypted message arrives 38 years later. To aid the decoding, a tycoon buys rejuvenation treatment for Sarah and Don, her husband of 60 years; however, only Don becomes young again. While coping with the physical indignities of old age, Sarah tries to figure out the puzzle of the second message. The bond between Don and Sarah continues, even while Don is joyfully and guiltily discovering the pleasures of living in a young body again. They want to do what's right for each other and the rest of humanity—for the aliens, too—if they can figure out what "right" could be. By its nature, a story about moral choices tends to get talky, but the talk is intelligent and performed by sympathetic and believable people.
I detested this book. I read about 1/3 then skimmed the rest to the end. Yes, there were moral choices, but the situation in which they were portrayed was completely unbelievable. I could not find any plausibility in the character of Don, whose sub-plot seemed to actually dominate the book. The author broke up the chapters by alternating between the modern time line and the past time line - a technique that I usually don't mind, but given how short each one was this time, was really annoying.
This is the third Sawyer book that I have read and if it weren't for the Hugo nominations, I wouldn't be reading them at all.
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