It was bittersweet to finish the book today. I really love this world, and you could sort of begin to see how he was going to tie it all up and end the novel (and series) about halfway through. That is when my interest began to peak, and I read the last 150 pages or so in one sitting… I wanted to know how it ended!
I felt less connected to this book than the prior 2. I tried to put my finger on it, and I couldn’t really come up with much. I felt more detached from the characters and the story in the first third of this book and it made reading a bit more difficult than the other two. Well, you can get away with some of that in a third novel, I guess, since I know a lot more about the characters than I did earlier, and it only takes hints (curling up in the life raft, tugging at the baseball cap) to bring up memories of the characters actions from before. I think some of it might be that this book had a regular theme of recalling prior events “remember when we did this at this place…” and I didn’t always remember the details as well as the characters. Maybe that is on me? Maybe not. I’m not sure.
I am going to spoil just a bit here… so SPOILER ALERT THIS PARAGRAPH! SKIP TO NEXT IF YOU DON’T WANT ANY! One thing that made the beginning of this book so different from the others relies on the end of book 2 where the fleet of knives starts decimating human space… there is a sadness, a sense of loss, it is palpable. Maybe that’s what GP was going for, in which case, he succeeded.
SPOILERS OVER. I liked how in this book the character of Nod (whose race, the Druff, is fascinating and I would love to see more about them) had a larger role. His scenes are always interludes to an interesting perspective on the events, for sure.
In the end, this series was about Trouble Dog, and her growth. The other characters grew and changed, but the sentient warship who developed a conscience… that is the book. And it was fitting to end with her as the PoV character in the last chapter. I was sad to leave this universe. I hope there is more. The ending certainly leaves open the possibility of further stories both in our universe, and in others. I guess we will have to wait and see!