The Ouroboros Wave, like the recently reviewed Dragon Sword and Wind Child, is a release from VIZ Media's Haikasoru imprint, which focuses on translating and releasing to English audiences Japanese contemporary speculative fiction. This may be relevant, because one of the weaknesses of this book is its character development, including its unnatural dialogue.
The main issue is the characters' inability to understand each other almost whenever they had a conversation. It's amazing how often characters “replied in confusion,” “answered in surprise,” or something of that sort. Either due to poor translation or a misguided sense of drama, everything a character says is treated as a revelation. Given the intelligence and scientific training of most of the characters in this book, it's amazing that no one is ever able to anticipate another person's point before they spell it out. More than once, a character even forgets his own point, starting to argue one thing, then arguing against the same thread as it is picked up by someone else. At times like that, I strongly suspect the translator lost track of the dialogue attribution.
Ignoring these surface issues, The Ouroboros Wave offers an intriguing future. He imagines a new kind of society developing around the AADD project, less hierarchical and more rational, though he frequently undermines his point by telling us his characters have a different way of thinking but not really showing it in a consistent or believable way. His stories include some hints that there is more than meets the eye in our universe, but by the end of the book we've only had hints. A novel this length would have had us meet the aliens by the end, or create a true Artificial Intelligence. Instead, all we get is a small wrap-around narrative, foreshadowing a climax we don't actually see.
If you're into hard science fiction, this is about as hard as it gets, though the weaknesses of the linked-story format, and the frequent character issues, do get in the way.
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