The end of the second book was SO GOOD to me. Like we got this sort of extension of a war over the unknown from the first book, but the politcal games had much higher stakes. And then EVERYTHING GOES SUPER WEIRD and you're left with the "To be continued..." floating on the proverbial screen.

This is my first re-read of the first 3 books, but this was the book I remembered the least about. And it's something of a bottle episode, but in the tradition of the best bottle episodes, there are stakes afoot. And better yet, there's a massive grey area for those stakes, at least from the point-of-view of some characters.

The finale is easily the best action-movie plot we've gotten in the series so far. It was simple, well executed, and a helluva lot of fun to read.

My only complaint is that Bull almost seems like a stereotype of a character, but we also don't get much of his background. But then we get an incredibly awesome and 3-dimensional character from Anna Volovdov, who is somehow more altruistic than James Holden and seems to be just what the series needs after Holden is taken down a dark path earlier in the series.

I also felt like some of the quippiness in the writing was lacking, but that's just a personal thing. I loved the humor of the second book, and maybe it just didn't match with the stakes of the third.

I've now re-read everything I'd read of the series so far, and I'm venturing into unknown territory with some shorts, and then Cibola Burn!