Jabartik

I continue to enjoy the ongoing story, but it felt like I was reading the ARC instead of the real one.

Just feels a little rushed and could have benefited from some more polish. The ‘sabotage' subplot especially I think will leave many people puzzled, I feel it should have been resolved within this book and not the next one (although I believe I understand what happened, shoot me a message if curious).

Brin's writing style is sort of maddening - I've never been fond of imperfect narrators - I don't mean omniscient, I mean narrators who are an integral part of the story who do “know” things, but don't “think” them where I can see them as a storytelling device to keep the suspense going longer).

Nevertheless, and despite the “main” story not being all that interesting to me, I'm fascinated by the world and backstory that he's created and want more.

The best of the first trilogy, although I either missed something that contributed to the events in the ending, or I'm supposed to chalk it up to the universe's biggest coincidence yet.

I went into this book with high hopes based on recommendations from others. It sets up an interesting universe, and I very well may check out additional books in this universe, but I can't say that I was particularly thrilled by this book itself.

The plot wandered all over the place, usually at an unbearably slow pace. I felt like far too much time was spent setting up a couple of key moments that most people probably saw coming from 50+ pages away.

I've read some of Banks' other works and liked them a lot more. As one of his earlier works that does manage to setup an interesting setting maybe I should cut it more slack, but I just don't feel that it holds up that well.

Didn't feel like a very satisfying conclusion. I might have liked it more if it wasn't the finale.