Generally I think the Hugo award winners are worth reading, but not Hominids. It's classic parallel world scifi: man falls through portal to an alternate earth, differences are compared.

At its best this genre can be a great form of social criticism, highlighting details of our society. But Hominids is just tedious. There's the chapter on religion, and the chapter on monogamy, and the chapter on crime, ... And woven all through it, a cartoonish story of a recently-raped woman learning to love again. Ugh.

culturebooks
  2003-10-12 22:13 Z