A Million Open Doors, by John Barnes
Solid interstellar-culture SF
(Review posted 13 Feb 2005 19:41:40)

A solid story of cultural and character development, set in a universe where humanity has been scattered across a thousand (roughly) worlds, and is now being abruptly reunited following the discovery of interstellar teleportation.

We get to see some of the effects of this on two quite different cultures, and on the main character; in all three cases a relatively narrow view of the world is improved (with some pain) by exposure to the larger world of ideas. A bit too pat in places, and a bit of artificial focus (in a city with millions of inhabitants going through a political and cultural revolution, there should have been some interesting events not directly involving our protagonist), but these are minor problems.

There are two more novels in this series ("Earth Made of Glass" and "The Merchants of Souls"), but they sound considerably darker, and I'm not tempted at the moment to read them.