It made the Ark seem very small. They crash-landed somewhere on the Ark and within 100 pages or less they were already where they needed to be. Granted, they probably crashed close to their intended destination, but none of that is really explained in great detail. Any references to locations or distance are glossed over any time they are mentioned, as if they were moving at high velocity. In Primordium, you
feel the distance as you read along. The traveling/journey is almost a character in of itself... But I'd surrender that to the writing skills of Greg Bear- the dude knows how to write in scale.
Yeah and the meatborg stuff was just unnecessary imo, unless it's a subtle hint of what "surprises" may be in store for enemies that will be faced other than Covenant and Promethean... But why go through all of that instead of just using the Flood instead.
Well, it's not necessarily the meatborg that was unnecessary, but it being Kodiak's brother was what made me roll my eyes. It was shoehorned in there pretty lazily and had no emotional threat or payoff. The mental struggle with the Elites was much better character development and I wanted to read more about it than what was written.