I read it on someone's recommendation that it was ecological/biological SF. I hated it. And hated it like I hated Speaker for the Dead: how the hell do you manage to have an ecology with only two to four species? And even most of the apparent species aren't even different species!?

Bah.

And it wasn't even fun, either, just blah blah Marjorie angst blah.

...let me take that back. I kinda liked the evil Hippae. I liked them because they were evil. Which made them the best thing in the whole book.