Across the Sea of Suns (1984)353 pages by Gregory Benford.

This is a sequel to In the Ocean of Night, the second book in the Galactic Center series.

This book picks up what must be several years later. Nigel Walmsley is older, but still the central character on the Lancer portion of the book. Lancer is a ship/asteroid/colony that Earth sent to Ra to check out a some transmissions. They make contact with the EMs (native life), but are soon ordered by Earth to a new destination. During that trip there is a flashback to Earth, where the seas have been seeded with swarmers and skimmers, a couple of alien lifeforms, which take over the oceans including any human shipping, etc.

Nigel treads a line between being a pompous ass and the misunderstood hero. It had been a while since I read Ocean of Night so I was pointed more towards the former, and then all these horrible things were happening, e.g. swarmers on Earth, so it was not heartening at all. There were times when Benford had everybody talking at once, with no note of who was saying what, other than he had one person speak with an accent, and had a character refer to another character. I found that really hard to follow. Then he's coming up with these species as far out as anything that Hal Clement would dream up.

The story was much better when I started thinking of Nigel in a favorable light, and when I was able to devote a little more time to reading (instead of 15 pages a night). I'm not going to rush right into reading Great Sky River, but it will be on my list, maybe November or so. I've got a few other books to read in the meantime, plus softball season just two months away.