Antimatter Blues

Antimatter Blues was fun and delivered the same kind of enjoyment as Mickey 7, but was entirely inessential. This book isn't important to understanding the characters or the world, and the author told the complete story of his big idea in the first book. This is not a continuation that demanded to be written, but a sequel that asks "Well, the first one was successful, what other stories can we tell in this world?"

This felt kind of like Haldeman's "Forever Free", except not horrible.

Also, it still didn't explore anything interesting about Cat.

while this second book in the series retains the same light humouristic style and introduces an interesting development to the first book's story… in literary sense it is bland: repetitious to the point of being boring, and light-hearted to the point of being shallow. it's as if tge author had to make a sequel instead of wanting to write it?

anyways, i was bored half of it. sorry.

This book was a lot better than the previous, where the "protagonist" just kept messing around and picking fights. The guy is still an ass and the banter is still fun too, but now there was actually a story with a purpose, complete with a heroic journey and self sacrifices. Even the aliens got a lot more character and a justified purpose.

I also appreciated how the overall tone was less depressing, with less brooding about death and failed colonies. There's still some of that left of course but things are finally starting to look better for this little colony!