Humans, by Robert J. Sawyer

This is the second installment in Sawyer's "The Parallax Trilogy", a story centered on the premises that two parallel universes are suddenly linked by a portal after a quantum computing experiment. One of the universes is ours, in which Homo Sapiens flourished while Homo Neaderthalensis faced extinction. The other universe is exactly the opposite.

Whereas the first book, "Hominids", was plagued by an insipid love story delivered like the worst of the American soap-operas, this book looks into what is really interesting: the why's and how's of the development of two different societies. We get to learn a lot more about the Neanderthal's version of Earth, the rules that govern their society, and, at the same time, confront their values with ours. There are interesting explorations into notions of personal privacy, theology, ethics, and government. I found it very enjoyable and feel that in this book Sawyer went back to the style that lead me to believe, after reading "Calculating God", that he is one of the few sci-fi authors who tread the terrain that Isaac Asimov has paved.