It was well written and characterised, and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't vastly science-fictional. By which I mean that its central premise wasn't particularly rigorously extrapolated or examined. It felt like The Other Boleyn Girl (which admittedly I've not read, only seen as a movie) set in a slightly odd alternate history.
Depends what you think the central premise is. If you think it's the alternate history, probably (though see this). If you think (as I do) it's the depiction of human-but-alien perspectives, then no, not at all. :-)
I would regard the central premise as the existence of an aquatic hominid species, interfertile with humans, and both the alternate history and the human-but-alien perspectives as being consequences arising from that premise. And I'd have liked to see a little more evidence that Whitfield had thought long and hard about the biology (especially the evolutionary biology).
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