Als der Seelenmeister starb

Not as fun as the other books in this series imo, but we do finally get a badass bisexual character from Butler who survives. So, major points. (I wish we had spent more time on that!!!!! Butler spends so much time interrogating and imagining sexual and romantic dynamics between men and women. Imagine if she had spent more time on queer women?!)

The patternmaster series is interesting in that the books are really only tangentially related, the first two more than the last. Wild Seed was probably the best one. Patternmaster had to spend way more time on the world building; Clay's Ark had an absolutely bleak and almost gratuitously gorey ending. At least Patternmaster ends on a high note.