Hominids: Volume One of the Neanderthal Parallax

Once again, I listened to the audio version of this book during my commutes, and sometimes while walking around. I got through it quite quickly, of course it wasn't as long as some of the other books I listened too, but I sacrificed quantity for what I hoped would be quality. And I really enjoyed it! I can see why it won the Hugo Award.
The characters were great-- Ponter is loveable, Mary, Louise, and Reuben are all interesting.
I enjoyed the details of the Neanderthal version of earth, somethings were delightfully surprising about it, I enjoyed the possibilities that I hadn't considered. I thought it was wonderfully inventive, but not too unbelievable. The bisexuality discussion scene is hilarious.
Some scenes were very emotional, and definitely sucked me right in.
There were a couple of points that I didn't like, such as Mary and Louise's religious discussion that I felt somewhat unnecessarily convoluted what would become Louise's theory on the quantum-mechanical split between the two parallel universes 40,000 years ago.
I'm about halfway through the second book in this series now, called Humans.