Review: "Bloom" by Wil McCarthy

"Bloom" by Wil McCarthy is a well-written hard SF story about the dangers of self-replicating techonology. In the book, a man-made microorganism called mycora eats the earth and the inner solar system(which becomes known as the Mycosystem), leaving only two societies surviving: the Jovian Immunity and the asteroid belt Gladholders. The story, told by a "blogger"-type journalist(good stuff there) from the Immunity, chronicles the travels of an Immunity ship into the Mycosystem.
The technology in the book was thouroughly believable, though advanced. I liked the imagination and research that McCarthy obviously put into this work.The societies were believable, and imaginative, portraying two totally different ways of living on the edge of disaster.
McCarthy has also done an excellent job on the characters: they are deep and you can understand them. The main character is really brought to life by McCarthy's writing.
Overall, this book was almost perfect. The only thing that I disliked was the ending: it felt far too mystical and transcendental as compared to the excellent Hard SF that preceded it. I won't give away details, but I do think that a more plausible ending could have been concocted.
Rating: 9/10