A very absorbing book that makes you ponder about why we are here, and what is soul? I read the whole Riverworld series multiple times about twenty years ago, and found it really fascinating with all the possibilities of humankind being resurrected all at one time on a strange world. After re-reading this book again, the idea is still very interesting, but I think the book is bogged down too much with personal observations and details, so many details, so the story seems a little choppy. You can tell that Philip Jose Farmer really admired the people he made the protagonists in this story and described them very well, but I think all the detail detracts from the story quite a bit. The biggest thing that you can take away from this book is your own ponderings - what would you do, do we have souls that travel the Universe after we die or does life begin and end with the physical body?