Niko

This was fine. I found the protagonist irritating and had trouble telling many of the other characters apart. 

I think part of what I loved about Weir's other books was that the main character was busy problem-solving things in interesting ways and this was mostly an emotionally immature non-astronaut having feelings. Weir clearly struggled to write a woman of color character and it comes off as awkward and cringey (though not nearly as bad as some other male authors 🙄) like, what was with the reusable condom subplot? 

Skip this one.

I had high hopes as I LOVE a good space opera and I've never read a serialized work like this before. 

The diverse cast of characters and morally ambiguous questions that were posed were interesting to me but the plot and pacing were all over the place. The book really dragged on and I found myself skipping much of the last couple chapters because I just wanted to be done with the whole thing. It also felt really disjointed in terms of the writing, with some chapters including plot holes or requiring further editing (poor grammar and awkward sentence structure).

I wanted to enjoy this more than I did and I don't think I'll be continuing to read the rest of the series :(

I love Patrick Rothfuss and I will FIGHT anyone who tries to give him a hard time ESPECIALLY the whiny babies who leave 1-star reviews on unreleased books because they think he owes them something what is wrong with you????

This was fine. The plot and character development were quite a bit stronger than in the first book which I appreciated but the pacing in the beginning still felt murderously slow. I couldn't find it in myself to root for any of the characters because constantly hopping from subplot to subplot meant never getting a chance to let personalities breathe and develop. In the end I felt a bit bored by the whole thing and hope the final book provides some semblance of satisfying closure.

My biggest gripe here was the dizzying array of names/terms/titles that were used throughout the book without any explanation. It often left me bewildered and it wasn't until after I finished that I found the glossary and things started to make a bit of sense. This REALLY took me out of the story and made it hard to follow.

I wish I could say that I enjoyed this book more than I did because there is a lot of promise here in terms of character- and world-building. My interest really started to pick up after the first assassination attempt and Maia beginning to find his stride as emperor, but prior to that the plot just seemed to plod along with our young protagonist stuck in his own head and a steaming pile of political intrigue (the sort of thing in which I have zero interest). As much as I would have hoped to I don't think I'll be continuing the series.