I respect and admire the effort put into this series of books, but for me this was a case of sunk cost fallacy. I loved the first book, I kinda liked the second one, and this one was a full-on slog. So much driving. So much long-winded description of the environment, detailed directions of someone’s travel. Considering how much happens outside the heads of these characters, it’s bizarre how much time we spend inside them. Perhaps if you find the characters compelling it’s worthwhile, but for my money, Robinson killed off most of the interesting characters before this book.

I think it’s a product of its’ time — mid-90’s sci-fi was nothing but doorstop books, epic trilogies spanning generations, but it was mostly either space operas or someone looking to write the next Foundation, and Robinson was pretty close. Still, look up the good reviews, and they all defend the dullness by claiming ‘…but the science!’. Which, sure, but I’m not reading 2000 pages of JAMA for fun either. Like I said, I respect and admire it, but I didn’t enjoy it.

I could write a few hundred words about it, but I’ll suffice to say this:

If you read the first one and loved it, and read the second one and didn’t, don’t expect redemption here.