Dr. Keith Adams Salazar, an archeologist, is not the stock hero of science fiction adventure. Although courageous, he is basically self-centered and worthless.

He abandoned his first wife Kara for a younger woman, which triggered their son's suicide. He and his second wife bickered constantly, so he has left her, too. Now when Kara appears at the archeological dig at the ancient city of Nomuru, he tries to get her to take him back and spends much of the novel urging her to have sex, even though she has excellent reasons to loathe him.

The novel does not gloss over his shortcomings. He vows never to kill a Kook, but then kills them frequently. He thinks of himself as a scientist committed to truth but believes that being painfully blunt about his reasons for leaving Kara means that he is a truthful man. And when his work at...