Terra Ignota is now my favorite series! Perhaps the Stars nailed the finish. Everything is fantastically concluded, and it has something cool saved up even for the last pages.

First, how does this volume compare to the previous three? It's a bit different. Or maybe I'm different — a few years passed between.

We have a new narrator, who I think is intentionally bland. So we ache for Mycroft Canner's voice even more. The first 100 pages are like the boring parts of Iliad. But it doesn't stay like that. In fact, the prose grows ever more epic as we get closer to the end. An example:

Just as the hour came when shadows lengthen into fingers, and the weary ploughman smiles knowing labor’s end approaches with the goldening of the light, a force of Cousins broke through the barricades around the palace shell. Quick as a flock of gulls that race along the churning, white-maned surf, they arced their way up to the largest gleaming central face of the man-made mountain range of conjoined pyramids that form great Caesar’s home.

I just really enjoyed the poetry. But also the style is more tightly bound to the plot than in previous books. The Iliad and Odyssey are not just referenced, they kick down the doors and burst into the story.

And all that weirdness works perfectly together. The theological part is breathtaking. The sci-fi part is cool. The Homeric part is surprising but justified and welcome. The plotting and scheming is still strong. The societal part lends itself most to discussions with friends. (Which Hive would you be?) And the ending is amazing. Even if you were hoping for a happy ending, there is no way you were hoping for an ending this happy. Who can even conjure this?