To Each This World (book review)

Julie Czerneda ★★★★★ More like the Species Imperative trilogy or In The Company of Others than Czerneda’s more recent Night’s Edge series, To Each This World is a hard science-fiction story featuring multiple alien biologies, space colonies, polymorphic artificial lifeforms with a sense of humor, quantum-entangled tech-mediated telepathy and disposable avatar bodies for the astronauts who try to negotiate the future of humanity with aliens who think very differently from us. It takes a little while to get going, but it does. And what could easily have turned into a series of plot tokens – travel to the next colony, convince them to return before the cosmic threat gets them, lather, rinse, repeat – never settles into a pattern. Each world they visit has fared very differently, and has to be handled in a different way. Spoilers: Some of the colony worlds are well-established. Another was so inhospitable that only a handful of descendants are eking out a miserable living. One turned out…