Now my subject, but the narrative is really not my style. Personalizing the isotopes makes it harder for me to remember how their differentiation works, because when they are described with anything like velleity it confuses my picture of the completely un-willed processes that fractionate isotopes. All of this book is anthropomorphized, and the characters who are people to start with get extra cute nicknames; it is the opposite of credentialist, which is good, but I found it distracting.
My mental frame bent out of true when, for instance, thinking of isotope fractionation through cell stomata. The plant cells do have something like velleity, do expend energy to act on a biological need for more or less H2O or CO2, but nothing actually cares which isotope comes in; it happens, reliably, but un-willed.
On the other hand, for the many people who don't remember anything outside a story with intent, such a metaphor is probably useful. The glee Fry exhibits in describing the ecosystem problems untangled by isotope studies ought to pull people in. The equations one needs are there, carefully boxed and explained; and the examples are broken down into very simple comprehensible parts, which I am grateful for.
Find in a Library:Stable Isotope Ecology
So wrote clew in Science.