"Startide Rising" by David Brin (Science Fiction, Spoiler Warning)

My edition of this novel is around four hundred and sixty pages long - and none of it wasted. There's a lot of stuff in here - lots of characters, including aliens, lots of plot lines, alien settings - quite a bit of material to cram into one novel. Heck, some of the individual stories, or background stories could easily be developed into books themselves.

The actual story does, however, centre on a particular idea, something called uplift. Uplift is the process by which an intelligent, sentient species helps another, pre-sentient species achieve sentience/intelligence. In exchange for this, the uplifted race is indebted to those who uplift them, at least for a time. Relationships between the uplifters and the uplifted vary in how harmonious or conflicted they are, depending on the cultures involved.

The main characters here are the crew of a ship called Streaker. The crew includes a small group of humans, several uplifted dolphins and an uplifted chimpanzee.

The plot involes the crew of the ship trying to hide on a planet called Kithrup, after making a discovery that might provide a link to the identity of the progenitors. The progenitors are the race that allegedly became sentient first, and started uplifting others, although nobody is sure about how it all started.

But, the possible existence of progenitor artifacts touches a nerve, and several alien races - Galactics - enter the scene, fighting amongst themselves as well as causing problems for the Streaker crew.

I think Brin took on a hefty challenge with this novel. Throughout, he covers the idea of uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees, how their distinct cultures work as influenced by their own biology and the effects of uplift. He shows things about how this plays out in the interactions between the dolphins, humans, and Charlie Dart, the chimpanzee. And he introduces the galactics, and shows some even more alien cultures. And he includes all this while discussing the uplift concept, and how humans might be an exception to the usual uplift rules. And he does this against an imaginary setting which he has to describe.

So...it should come as no surprise that this is one of those books that comes with a glossary of terms and characters at the beginning. I think this is the type of book with a lot of fascinating ideas in it, but so many, that you have to be prepared to concentrate and pay very close attention as you go along. This is not what I'd call light, easy reading. Which is fine, but I know it's not to everyone's taste. For those of us who don't mind a challenging read, by all means give it a try.

I did find there were times when I would have liked a bit more detail on certain points - maybe more visual detail about what some of the alien creatures looked like, for example. But to get through the amount of material he wanted to cover in the book, I guess Brin had no choice but to be very selective in how much detail to include on any particular point.

But what he did find room for, he does well; the interactions among different species are nicely worked out. I don't actually know enough about dolphin biology to comment on the scientific accuracy of those parts of the story, but it was definitely well thought out, and made all the characters - human, dolphin, alien, chimpanzee - good characters.

And the plot moves at a quick pace, with plenty of action.

All in all, a good read, just be prepared to concentrate and pay close attention to keep track of everything - there are a lot of alien names and words that aren't part of everyday English - so if that's to your taste, you'd enjoy it.