I loved the setup and ride for this book. It was great. It's a lot like book 2, in that a massive system-wide war has broken out as a result of the previous book.

That said, some of the POV chapters felt a bit scattered. Don't know if some of the Medina Station Belters are included because they'll be characters in later books, or if there was just a need to show what was happening there. But those chapters felt out of place. But then you have the return of my boy Prax, who basically goes soft revolutionary from behind enemy lines. Not necessarily a guerrilla, but acting true to who we know him to be, showing that being human during a war isn't all about shooting the other side.

I did appreciate that aspect of the story, in that this is also a civil war amongst the different factions of the Belt at the same time it's a war of the Belt versus the inner planets. There's discussion of what a civil war is actually like, how sometimes you're shooting at friends or relatives. How there's that added level of guilt.

But the end sort of kicks the feet out from under the rest of the book. Usually I like it when the crew "sciences the shit" out of things, to borrow a term from Andy Weir. In this case, it felt like a deus ex machina, and a very literal one at that. If you watch the show, the ending is not substantially different from how the show ended (this is the final book used for the show, with the exception of some of the Laconia stuff that is still to come, I'm assuming), with one exception for a specific character (who I won't name). It almost felt like they'd written themselves into a corner and then didn't know how to get out. I was expecting something a little different....but then again, there's 3 more books, and while they've had their weaker narratives, the series as a whole seems to recover. So looking forward to what's next.