Normally inserted references to another work by the author make me cringe. Sawyer's throw-away reference to his book Illegal Alien however, made me sigh with the memory of a good book. Humans is undoubtably Sawyer's worst. The social satire is at best heavy-handed and preachy and at worst simply eye-glazing. If the satirist's weapon is the rapier, Sawyer uses a sledge hammer. The use of news clips is a familar device in Sawyer's writings, its abscence here is missed. I didn't really get a sense of how the world was reacting to the re-opening of the portal and relations with the Neanderthals.This book did give me a better insight into our own world however. After the upteenth time a Neanderthal criticized us I realized why our ancestors had wiped them out.