The book starts off with Charlie, who is in charge of terraforming a distant planet.  Earth has climate change problems as well as political problems leading up to a global nuclear war.  For the 1st 100 pages we follow Charlie's story.  Then we switch to Nova Terra and the 200+ people who have been sent there to scout out the progress of the terraforming.  Go another 100 pages or so and we are through a couple of generations there.  Finally we start going into the story that is 4000 years in the future.  Mix in part of the story of Charlie back and forth.  I feel like this would have been better as a 3 part series.  At 600 pages could have just focused on the future situation and it would have been fine.