OK, there will be
The text is full of errors, which even basic editing should have caught.
The bowlworld's diameter is described as sometimes the diameter of Mercury's orbit and sometimes as Earth's. For a rotational period of 9 days, that gives 1G gravity for the larger size (not 0.8G) or 0.4G (not 0.8G) for the smaller. The microgravity near the pole will be perpendicular to the axis of rotation, so almost parallel to the ground - so how is anyone standing up there? The star is sometimes a red dwarf and sometimes a large orange star like our sun. The atmosphere membrane is 7 km above the ground but there are clouds hundreds of kilometres high. A science officer calculates that a vehicle travelling at 600 km/hr will circumnavigate the bowl rim in a few weeks. The correct answer is 70 years (or 180, depending on which version of the bowl we use). The ship travels 40 light years in 80 years, except it's only doing a fraction of light speed, so it can't have. The ship lost contact with Earth a century ago, but they've only travelled for 80 years, and anyway later on it turns out that there have been regular updates from Earth. These errors go on and on.
Howard gets his arm injured. They patch him up, but a few paragraphs later the same piece of metal is back in his arm, so they patch him up again. They shoot alien birdpeople in an air car and one moment, the poor things are writhing around in agony, but a second or two later, they're all still and dead. Abye says that aliens are hunting them, then, when someone says they’re being hunted by aliens (one page further on) Abye reacts by saying ‘they’re after us?’ His eyes ‘go wide’ ...
Those are far from the only such examples. It's just sloppy and ridiculous writing, or more likely a draft that was never edited.
And apart from the egregious number of errors, there are major plausibility issues as well. For one example, the hand-waving ease in which our heroes are able to learn the alien language. It's just silly.
I'm sorry, but I think the authors were having a lend of us.
Perhaps if other members are willing to take one for the team, we could have more opinions.
I do agree that the alien culture is at least interesting.
I have a copy in my to be read pile based on a vague memory from years ago, and more importantly Raf's review. I like what I remember as " Big Fuc____ Object" stories. Verifying, I discover that the term is actually "Big Dumb Object". I'll probably keep it until the library loan/renewals period ends, as a backup. It is notable that 8 others liked his commentary, so it must have something. Certainly scale of conception.
