Honestly, this felt extremely low stakes. We're all used to murderbot by now, and the entire book felt like he has the situation well in hand no matter what the threat assessment module said. I'm glad he's working on his emotional intelligence, but I'm also not here to watch a non-human become more human. There just wasn't much new in this installment.

This will likely be better as a reread, and there are many scenes throughout I really enjoyed, but I think diving into the deep end of 10000 year long relationships between people I've barely met through the eyes of someone who's barely met them makes this read feel more like eavesdropping on the loud breakup at the table next to you than really feeling invested in what was going on.

I love Gideon, and was so happy to finally see her again. I love Harrow, and what she's done to herself and her own struggles were what made me keep turning pages. Iantha was at least an interesting foil to Harrow, if a bit insufferable. I really couldn't care less about almost everyone else until probably page 400 and that's a real long way to go on the hopes it'll improve.

While I did ultimately enjoy book, insane ending and all, it's a strange feeling to end in a way that says "and the villain wins open endedly" or be a clear set up for an ongoing series when you already spent 1200 pages getting here. Setting up this story then having a character say let me read 500 pages of backstory on my new not yet girlfriend's family going back 12 generations was also an insane choice. There's a world where the Mayfair witches books start with the first two instead of shoving several shorter novels together into this behemoth.

Anne Rices crisis of faith comes through loud and clear across the ending of this book, even more so than in Memnoch the Devil

This was a fun read, though the bar is super easy to clear if you give me an interesting take on necromancy so it was there from the start. I also do love a book where the characters just straight up hate each other, so another easy win for Gideon and Harrow off the bat. I do feel like time passed weirdly during this story, mostly because of a line near the end that made me to "wait how long have we been at this".

Overall fun and we respect women's wrongs here

It's clear almost from the outset that this is a new author trying to continue Larsson's work, and doing only a barely passable imitation. I got through this one to see if I wanted to continue the series, but I think I'll continue to believe this is a trilogy. I love Salander and Blomkvist, and Officer Bubble too honestly, and while they were mostly the same there was just something missing from each of them.