I enjoyed the first book the series, maybe I'd call it a three star? The Big Ideas in that book, and this one, are great scifi stuff and I want to read them. But the narrative device that the author uses in the first book -- exposition dumps taking up a huge percentage of the book in the form of interviews -- was really offputting by the end of the book. I was surprised that he used the exact same format in this second book. Could it have an even larger percentage of the book be consisting of expository interviews than the first book? This was nearly a DNF book for me, by the last third I was figuring I'd sunk enough time to keep chugging along. It's a shame because the big ideas he had in here were really interesting and likable, but the storytelling device and the limited amount of time it left for us to spend time with the protagonists, made it feel shallow.

I think there's a third book coming. My memory is terrible, but I hope I remember to skip it.