This is quite a different book to the first of the series. Less space opera, more politics.

It's not immensely subtle or nuanced - it's still an easy read, which is good - but it works well as a middle book in a trilogy and along the way it offers some views into our own time: of an extreme version of the post-war world trade paradigm, where every nation is so intertwined with every other that nobody wants to make overt war; and into short-termism in the face of impending disaster, which is something everybody on Earth knows all too well.

I'll be interested to see how the third book pans out.