[TW: alluded incest, mentions of rape, inappropriate sexual acts in front of a minor, paedophilia, sexism, medical descriptions]

What the fuck, Frederik Pohl. I thought your weird forays into writing a "queer" character (that was only actually "queer" due to childhood trauma) was just you being goofy, but the continuous hypersexualized descriptions of a 14(!!!) year old girl by her 40 year old brother-in-law and another overly sexualized teenager of undisclosed age made this book incredibly difficult to read. I enjoyed the parallel Broadhead storylines in Gateway and was very sad to see them swapped out for multiple perspectives in this book. There was not one character I liked, and the slow unraveling of the mystery of the Heechees also fell very flat. I genuinely enjoyed the horror of the unknown Gateway brought with it - sitting on edge every time someone entered a Heechee ship, unsure of whether they would return, and whether this would be alive or dead. Pohl obviously aimed to make a whole series out of it, though sadly lost the charm of the first book while doing so. I'm just angry I wasted so much time reading about men who wanted to do sexual things to a minor and unravelling a mystery that didn't need to be solved. Also why did one character have to be a Nazi son? What point was THAT supposed to make? And why do people never prepare for something they call the 130 day fever? Why would you risk billions of dollars of damages every 130 days instead of just... shutting down the world for a bit? I don't get it.