The dust jacket promised one kind of story that intrigued me. The content, while mildly satisfying, was not anything close. The jacket promised a look at Earth 1000 years after the events in New Earth. It also promised rising tensions between Earth and worlds it saved. What the reader gets is nice Earth whose technology has not advanced as far as excepted. Given a leap of a 1000 years I wanted to be dazzled. I was not. The crux of the story is the tale of astronaut placed in cry sleep for 1000 years after his mother ship is destroyed. This is supposed to be a story of a man ripped out his time and catapulted into the future. Instead we get what felt like a warmed over love triangle and a murder mystery. Neither plot line is expertly done. They did give me some pleasure though. Bova has a reputation for weakly fleshed out characters. This story follows that trend. The female characters are helpless and need the protection of rich fathers and a charming hero. The villains are fat with sinister motives to create a galactic empire so they can make huge amounts of money. To his credit Bova at the last minute introduces an interesting character who plays a key roll lin ending this weak story. ( )

Earth tells the story of Tray Williamson, recently rescued from an ill-fated mission to another star in which he was the only survivor. He is back on Earth, a thousand years after leaving due to the relativistic time of space travel (I like when sci fi authors account for that), and is recovering from the trauma of losing his friends and fiance in the process with the help of a robot companion, "Para". While he's having difficulty getting past his trauma, he is thrust into the geopolitical issues of the day, the history of which is explained briefly: an electromagnetic "death wave" was on the way from the center of the Milky Way, and a mysterious race of aliens, The Predecessors, made contact and gave humans the technology to protect the solar system. In exchange, humans agreed to go to other solar systems and help other sentient beings survive the death wave.

The political controversy pits the former leader of the government, Jordan Kell, against the current leader and villain of the book, Harold Balsam. Kell's faction wants to take care to be benevolent helpers of the aliens they encounter, while Balsam wants to form colonies and extract resources. Kell quickly takes to Tray, who comes along on a trip on Balsam's ship to tour Jupiter's ocean. Tragedy and intrigue ensue.

I won't spoil any more plot. But this book disappointed me quite a bit. I'm not already a Bova fan, so maybe I'm not quite getting it- this is part of his "Grand Tour" series, books about the planets in the solar system. It's written in 2019, the year before the author died, at an advanced age. Earth seems to be a stand-alone book, but there are many tantalizing ideas in here that are not fleshed out at all- what is up with the Predecessors and why would an advanced species need the people of Earth to accomplish their goals? What's the deal with the beings in the Jupiter ocean, who seem to be intelligent and respond to Tray's music? What is the nature of Para, the android- is he sentient?

I was also annoyed by how predictable it was- it is blindingly obvious that foul play is being planned. I think Bova has a tendency to write characters that are one-dimensional, and this is particularly problematic with the villains- people who couldn't possibly convince anyone they had good intentions- a reviewer of one of his other books on this site referred to "mustache-twirling villains" which is just right.

And then there's the whole premise of the book, which is that Tray, who is essentially a PTSD patient in a psychiatric facility, gets invited to parties in which he meets the most powerful people on Earth. Not very plausible. And of course there's the gorgeous love interest for Tray, who turns out to be the daughter of another rich and powerful man.

I didn't really enjoy the other Bova book I read, and I need to stay away from him. Reading other reviews of his books on here, his treatment of science is widely praised, and I guess I agree. But his characters are just not interesting. ( )

The concluding (?) novel in a long series that includes _Death Wave_, _Apes and Angels_, and _Survival_. The time frame is now centuries if not millennia in the future, and the big issue is whether Earth should exert imperial power over exoplanet-dwelling ETIs. All the action, however, takes place on and between Earth, Jupiter, and Luna.

This was my first Ben ova novel, and it was a complete disappointment. Sophomoric, written for eighth graders? ( )