This was terrible. It wasn’t that the story didn’t resolve in a satisfying way. That’s subjective. What the letdown was here was everything else:

The writing was awful! Like early-draft Project Hail Mary bad. Pointless jokes made at inappropriate times. Weirdly informal snark and sarcasm while the planet is in peril. Ridiculous dialogue acrobatics to fill in plot, like on a bad episode of CSI or something. Just terrible.

The structure was frustrating. The oral-history style was not bad in the first book and perfect for the second one, but new characters, multiple timelines and overly clever structuring just made it annoying.

The new characters? Bad. The old characters? Also bad!

If the first book was this bad I would have given up 100 pages in. I still recommend the series! Just please skip the third book, go find spoilers or something.