John's Reviews > Transcendental

** spoiler alert ** Three hundred pages of talky talk as a group of humans and nonhumans take a long, long trip into another galactic arm to find a device that optimizes one's body and abilities in some vague way. The book is padded out by several characters delivering their non-relevant back stories, and even the battles with swarms of large spiders at the end are dull and perfunctory. The only reason I gave this one star was because I thought that the revelation partway through that the protagonist had been having "first time" sex with a certain woman over and over again because she had the power to make him forget each time was a clever touch.

The overall tone and setup reminded me of Robert Wilfred Franson's SHADOW OF THE SHIP---but that tale also had a real storyline rather than a premise serving as a strung out placeholder.