john holst

I loved the three body problem trilogy but ball lightning was no where near those levels. The first 2/3s of the book were alright but after a character comes back and starts telling their 20 page long life story it got very long in the tooth. The bit at the very end got me interested but all in all I can't say this lives up to three body.
Still worth a read but skim the parts you don't like.

There were large parts of this book that were good. But there was large sections of describing battles in details that were not gone into in any other section of the book. I was more interested in the broad themes of what was happening. It is a interesting thought experiment. It's hard to get into the mindset of a kid but I doubt this is how a world of children would go down.

Some of the short stories were interesting but not big and awesome like his longer series' or other big books.  Some of them felt so small they didn't even need to be the 100 or so pages they were. 

There was a point where I thought this one was the least favorite of the three I read so far but the way a part towards the end was written actually brought me to tears. Each of the series installments really is it's own thing. You can't really compare them.

TThe first half of the book is very good as they bounce through the stories. The second half is just two huge chapters and they are very dense.