Edited sentence: It doesn’t take too long to catch up with the characters from the first book of the series; this book can be read alone.The few non-humans are as sympathetic (ie likable and unlikable) as humans.The good guys fight for niceness and the bad guys get their comeuppance but usually without death or even too much pain.The humans have adapted to be suitably tough.The planet (Spatterjay) is full of incredibly violent wildlife.The violence is taken to such a ridiculous extreme that is becomes cartoonish and so acceptable... Anyway, most of the characters are immortal and recover quickly.There is a wide range of other adapted humans including “zombies” whose original but dead bodies are kept going by machines and nanomachines.This is space opera with depth