User Profile

There's a lot to say about this book. It reminds me a lot of the first three books in the series, especially in terms of pacing. There's never a moment where the story stops happening, except maybe to build on some of the characters. The pacing is incredible, and sets up the final book in a way that had me both excited to finish the series and dreading the end - I genuinely don't want this to be over.

This book was incredibly well-paced. I won't spoil anything, but there's a major character death involved, but it happens during one of the massive battles in the book. But the others can't really stop, and instead, they carry that with them until the end of the book. When you finally get a chance to take a breath, you realize there's one more thing to do: you have to mourn with the remaining crew of the Roci. It's such a brilliant, well-written moment that truly reflects what it must be like to lose someone you love in battle, but having to continue fighting.

I'm taking a bit of a breather before Leviathan Falls, but good lord, I can't wait to see how all this ends up.

I loved the setup and ride for this book. It was great. It's a lot like book 2, in that a massive system-wide war has broken out as a result of the previous book.

That said, some of the POV chapters felt a bit scattered. Don't know if some of the Medina Station Belters are included because they'll be characters in later books, or if there was just a need to show what was happening there. But those chapters felt out of place. But then you have the return of my boy Prax, who basically goes soft revolutionary from behind enemy lines. Not necessarily a guerrilla, but acting true to who we know him to be, showing that being human during a war isn't all about shooting the other side.

I did appreciate that aspect of the story, in that this is also a civil war amongst the different factions of the Belt at the same time it's a war of the Belt versus the inner planets. There's discussion of what a civil war is actually like, how sometimes you're shooting at friends or relatives. How there's that added level of guilt.

But the end sort of kicks the feet out from under the rest of the book. Usually I like it when the crew "sciences the shit" out of things, to borrow a term from Andy Weir. In this case, it felt like a deus ex machina, and a very literal one at that. If you watch the show, the ending is not substantially different from how the show ended (this is the final book used for the show, with the exception of some of the Laconia stuff that is still to come, I'm assuming), with one exception for a specific character (who I won't name). It almost felt like they'd written themselves into a corner and then didn't know how to get out. I was expecting something a little different....but then again, there's 3 more books, and while they've had their weaker narratives, the series as a whole seems to recover. So looking forward to what's next.