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Very brief, but good! You can definitely see the sensitivity reader seams here but that's not necessarily a bad thing especially for something with such a wide audience. It's fun to see that dovetail with Sanderson's trademark mechanical-mindedness, too.

This series is as ever a balm to my soul. This volume is a little bit more of a collection of disjoint stories, but now that the world's been established it's a lovely way of just immersing oneself in it. And that is to a large degree the appeal here: the way in which the world is so detailed and the stories such an admixture of the quotidien and the otherworldly makes it feel like a space to exist in and allow to sweep over oneself. Reading it is meditative in a similar sense to revisiting an old favorite, but it has that effect from the first read.

Much like 2666, it's hard for me to tell how I feel about this in the moment, but I strongly suspect it'll haunt my memories for a long time to come. In fact, the inspiration for reading it in the first place was that 2666 kept bouncing around in there. While this doesn't have the same eerie quality, the depth that its 360-degree portrait of the main characters goes into is incredibly impressive. I have no idea how to summarize who Arturo Bolano or Ulises Lima are in words, but I feel that they now inhabit my heart.

It's incredible that people read this as a satire of (quoting the Goodreads blurb here) "Soviet pseudo-science" when it's so clearly applicable to research-focused academia in any context, or honestly any job involving working with and around the idiosyncrasies of your colleagues. Granted Vybegallo can be read pretty clearly as a Lysenko analog, but I think the more interesting parts of the book are the ones where its affection for the process of scientific labor outshines its scorn for the foibles. The final section on Nevstruev is particularly poignant as well as being really strong science fiction writing, which obviously the authors are capable of but still takes one by surprise that far towards the end of what is up until that point a largely humorous book.

"It looks like we're all about food." Isn't that just the dream?

Nice to get some backstory and lore, but perhaps not as toothsome as some other volumes.

Simple, straightforward, but a good arc that fills in some important character gaps.

yeah okay he's got the juice

Largely a puzzle-box novel, full to bursting with mysteries and clues and red herrings, practically daring the reader to figure it out for themselves. It does have a few moments of genuine emotion that are very sweet, but also an American patriotism that comes across as quite grating.