Second book where more lifeforms become as sentient as human beings. Not just portids, but celaphods (from Old Earth, using the same mutation-increasing virus) but also alien microbes.
More trouble getting through this. He put the bar high and I failed to be engrossed in the story. His attempt to describe the views of celaphods troubled me (their chaotic minds seem incapable of building things) but I like how he uses the idea of their actual bodies, where their "head" just "suggests" things and their arms figure out how, extrapolates.
