I get the feeling that this book is going to stay with me for a long time. It has, what some folks refer to as, resonance. I didn't find it to be much of a page turner, not in the traditional sense (meaning that I was blowing through it as quickly as I could). But at the same time there was a momentum to the novel that did make me always want to find out what was going to happen next. 
 Buuuuuuttt.... then again, I almost gave it 3 stars, I didn't, in case you were wondering. Mostly because after I finished reading I really liked the unease it left in my belly. I felt... messed up, a bit. 
 I have been on a teeny little sci-fi-from-my-youth phase lately. This novel doesn't carry with it the same oooh... ahhhhh... sort of vibe like I got from reading 2010, but it has a much better narrative to it. A mystery novel with a protagonist that makes all the wrong decisions for all the right reasons. No real bad guys in this, just folks with differing perspectives. For the most part, all trying to do the right thing. 
 For me, the vibe I got from this reminded me of the time that I was in high school and there was this local legend of a 'glowing tombstone' nearby. The tale, as it was told, is that someone's tombstone glowed at night. No one knew why. We had been scaring one another with stories about this mystery - that had scientists baffled - since middle school. 
 And it was right down the road from where I lived. 
 Understand that I lived in a rural area. Not in a city, or a suburb, but in what most people referred to as 'the country.' It wasn't like we didn't have neighbors, but those neighbors might live a quarter mile away. 
 Regardless, we would stay up all night and scare one another with tales of local ghosts and mysteries. This 'glowing tombstone' thing though... it seems like that was more than just a story. This thing was so much a fact that no one ever bothered to even check it out. Everyone seemed to know someone that had seen it, but never actually checked on it themself. 
 So off we went. Fueled on Mt. Dew and boredom. We showed up at the graveyard, well past midnight, and stood around, wondering where this stupid tombstone was supposed to be. it wasn't very impressive. It looked a lot like a non-glowing tombstone. They ALL looked like non-glowing tombstones. Some genius pointed out that the headstone at the corner of the parking lot was glowing, which was kinda true, I guess, but the fact it was directly underneath the only streetlight in the area sort of made that a bit less than impressive. 
 Of course, the argument made, when I pointed that out, was that OF COURSE it's under the streetlight, they're trying to hide it because it freaks people out. So we tried that trick where you shine the flashlight at the top of the streetlight for a few minutes to trick the sensor so the light would go out. But it didn't work. I left disappointed because all the mystery of the haunted graveyard thing was a waste of time.. my friend left convinced he'd found the thing that no man would ever be able to understand. That we'd touched the mystery of death and came away all the wiser. 
 My point with all that is that there was a moment, right there when we were traveling to the graveyard when I had the 'what-if' moment where I wondered if we really were about to touch on something unknown. It was a strange and powerful feeling. This book does a good job of sort of mimicking that. There is a sense of dread that runs as a through-line in the story. 
 It made me feel small, and I liked it. Also reinforced the idea I've had that any aliens we meet out there among the stars might not be the best thing for us.