Benjamin

I just want to love these books so much, but I continue to muddle through each one subsequently more and more confused.

Maybe the fourth one will clear some things up. 

I honestly hoped the lies of the main character would take more center stage. Instead it's mostly a thrilling set of circumstances that happen to Locke outside of his control and with very little smart responses from him.

I found this one slightly less enrapturing than the first. Overall it moves the characters and world forward, however I don't really feel like the main character is growing towards a better place and instead seems to mostly be along for the ride.

That said, it's still a great entry in the series and a powerful narrative led by a strong, broken, genuine female. That alone is reason to pick this one up.

Honestly pretty disappointing, but at least it doesn't over stay it's welcome.

Don't come here looking for a mystery about aliens a la Contact. More of a political drama with some pretty childish adults.

Listen I loved the first book and I was fairly ravenous in listening to this one, but let me tell you I was LOST for about 95% of the time.

Realize, it's meant to leave you feeling this way, but between not being able to remember a single person's name across two books and the intentional obscurity...I was sometimes frustrated and frequently just felt stupid.

Video game-centric books are always a hard sell for me, an avid gamer. Usually the forced references made to help non-gamers understand the book and events come across as cringey. While this still happened a fair amount during my read, by the end it was certainly less.

Very much a Hitchhikers style story with a videogame theming that I'm excited to continue. 

Overall the main thrust is generally compelling, but yet again the vast number of simultaneous threads left me caring about less than half the story and the other half wishing to get back to the former. The main characters continue to feel childish, petulant, and without capacity to grow or change. The hard sci-fi is enjoyable enough to keep returning, though. 

Honestly I just found it boring. The intro did something special, it hooked me almost immediately with strong action, interesting use of magic and language, and left me wanting more. Then it just turned flat. I put it down about halfway through because I just couldn't muster anymore motivation to push on hoping it would return to the level of interest it had in the beginning.