Robert Sawyer and readability

I was up until 3:15 a.m. reading Robert Sawyer's book Hominids. I started it at 12:30 a.m., and had only intended to read for a few minutes, until I was sleepy enough to drop off. But I didn't get sleepy, and the book was an amazingly fast read, and around 2:30, when I was 150 pages from the end (around 430 pages total), I knew that I was going to stay up until I knew how it came out.

I didn't love the book, but it was remarkably readable. Interestingly, Flashforward was as well, but Golden Fleece was a slog. I'm not sure what creates that magic readability spell. The Steven Baxter book about the mission to Mars had it, though none of the other books of his that I've read did. Heinlein did, and Spider Robinson used to, even when his books made me regret having read them.

I started the sequel, Humans, this morning. It's an unfinished trilogy, so there'll be a wait for the next one.

I need to find a copy of Calculating God -- that's the one with the alien paleontologist and the very intriguing first chapter. I'm not sure the rest of the book can stand up to that first chapter, but I'm willing to give it a try.

And once I finish that, it's back to the fanfic editing project, no shit, really.