528 pages
English language
Published Dec. 27, 2021 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
That ending. mwah
I don't really wanna say more, but this entire series was a masterpiece of modern scifi. I loved it.
Genial cierre para una genial saga
A good finale. Hits all the right notes, closes all the story arcs. There's even a nice Epilogue at the end.
What I liked: The ever-present feeling of nostalgia with the characters and the reader. "That's it, this is the last one". I appreciated the Goths being explained (and more importantly why they're angry), but not so much that it became stupid mumbo-jumbo. Duarte waking up was an unexpected surprise, but fits with his character.
I especially liked having Tanaka as a viewpoint - it was hard to get right, and the authors did well. The book still felt like a "last session of a decade-long RPG", and that was wonderful. There's even a point in the book where Amos asks Holden if this was going to be a "one-shot".
Also, "Dogs in Space" need to be more common in SFF. I really liked Amos' character arc where he …
A good finale. Hits all the right notes, closes all the story arcs. There's even a nice Epilogue at the end.
What I liked: The ever-present feeling of nostalgia with the characters and the reader. "That's it, this is the last one". I appreciated the Goths being explained (and more importantly why they're angry), but not so much that it became stupid mumbo-jumbo. Duarte waking up was an unexpected surprise, but fits with his character.
I especially liked having Tanaka as a viewpoint - it was hard to get right, and the authors did well. The book still felt like a "last session of a decade-long RPG", and that was wonderful. There's even a point in the book where Amos asks Holden if this was going to be a "one-shot".
Also, "Dogs in Space" need to be more common in SFF. I really liked Amos' character arc where he finds his moral compass again - guess living with Holden has to rub off.
It also evokes the right feeling of "scale" - "this is beyond us - but we have to try anyway", as Elvi would probably put it. It almost felt like a allegory for Climate change to me at times.
The Bad: The book makes a pacing decision to repeat the last part of a scene when dealing with multiple PoVs, and it didn't work well for me, especially towards the end of the book. It's nice to see the same scene from different PoVs, but repeated usage made the pacing feel off.
The Okay: The Ending. There was no way any ending could have worked perfectly here, but I felt that 30/1300 fully baked planets was a bit of a harsh choice.
“Tiamat's Wrath” has you wondering how everything will be resolved, how our heroes can go on and overcome the Lanconian Empire. And the solution is boht surprising and understandable in hindsight. No Deus ex Machina (at least not as a literary device), just a few guns hidden by Chekov.
And the opportunity to go even further…
Content warning Mention of the third side of the gates.
Strong characterisation, following all the logic of previous books. Some excellent set pieces and interesting ideas about the gate builders.
I didn’t love the hand waving around the beings on the other side of the gates - his book steers away from the hard sci fi - but putting that aside, I enjoyed the book almost as much as Nemesis Games. Not as good as the first in the series though.
A wonderful conclusion to an excellent series!
Miller returning to aid Jim lessened the heartache of all the folks lost along the way.
Alex seizing the chance to be a father and grandfather helped lessen the blow of Jim's sacrifice.
Amos still being around after a millennia assures that Naomi and Theresa made it to the Sol system while sparing the reader the full brunt of Jim's loss on Naomi.
All in all, a wonderful yarn of a flawed species and individuals that can manage to find joy in the midst of sorrow, hope within despair and humor even at death's door
