Posted by I really liked the first installment of this series so I went ahead and got … all four that are out right now, lol.
This story follows more Bobs than the last one did, I think. At least it felt that way, I didn’t actually count POVs for either book. It did make things a little more confusing at the beginning, but once I got accustomed to their different storylines I was able to pick up which Bob we were talking about and what his deal was fairly easily.
I think my favorite plotline was the Deltans. They are a big feature in this book and a lot of pagetime is spent with the Bobs trying to figure out how to help them and see them succeed. Naturally, even after lots of planning things can still go wrong, and in some cases it’s Bobs fault. (All of the Bobs have different names, but it’s actually hard to remember which name belongs to which plotline so I don’t want to misspeak)
This book also starts to touch on the idea that if you’re immortal you’ll start to lose the people and things you care about as they age and you don’t. At the time of writing this review I’m done with all four books that are currently out, and I can say that this theme grows and expands and can become depressing for the reader as favorite characters age and die.
I think one of my favorite planets that gets explored in this book was the Kraken planet, it’s this big oceanic planet with giant sea creatures and that kind of thing is always fun for me. I wish there was a game like Mass Effect where there was a larger focus on the alien life on the planets and less so on the military plotline. This kind of thing just makes me giddy.
The other really neat aspect of the book is the Others, they are an athropod like race, a hive mind but not like the Borg, more like wasps. Unlike bees which are chill and make honey and exist harmoniously with nature, these dudes are more like parasitic wasps. They’re vicious, they produce nothing, and they take and take and take. Their whole deal is they fly around as one giant group and swarm a planet, strip it of everything that gives it life, and leave it a dead husk and move onto the next planet. There’s no reasoning with them, no bargaining, no bribing them away. They are pissed at the Bobs, too.
All in all I liked this one just as much as the last one, and as always Ray Porter stole the show and was fantastic.