The second book (of five) in the Riverworld series. This book develops a separate storyline from the first book (one would presume that the storylines meet in the third book). Unfortunately, the quality of this volume is lower than of the original. Character development is sometimes annoyingly weak (not that it was stellar in the first book, but it was above the threshold of annoying) and great leaps of time are made somewhat arbitrarily to maintain a weak semblance of realism (the first few years were filled with wars and interesting stuff that took up a hundred pages and then three uneventful years passed in a paragraph so that the three years of work that needed to be done could be declared to be done). It wouldn’t stand on it’s own, but after you’ve read the first book, you’re probably intruiged enough to merit reading the rest even if they aren’t high quality.