2024 re read: I agree with my prior assessment, but it does feel like more things were pertinent in this, with the benefit of hindsight.

The quality of the writing is still overall better than the last two books.

Where it falls short for me is the new characters that weren’t as interesting as Bobby and Chrisjen. Not all that much actually happened but because there were so many character POVs the plot inched, sometimes crawled, forward. I found it incredibly laborious at certain parts; neither of the previous books were ever even remotely so.

That’s a shame because the actual “point” of this one, as well as the world building that happens, is the best so far. I loved that it critiqued violence as the first choice, despite never being the best. And how that choice continually only made things worse for everybody. I also really liked seeing restorative justice in this genre space. It felt very novel! But just when it introduced it, it’s stilted because a lot of people get off Scott Free, (spoilers here: including Cortez at the end of the book just hanging out having a nice convo after inciting many, many deaths as well as mass panic)

All in all, I still enjoyed it because of the novel aspects to the plot and some of the characters I like were still around. I liked Anna despite her somewhat boring POV (especially as she has no character arc to speak of) because of the contrast and commitment to non violence. The other two new characters felt like filler, though. I think this story would have been a lot more punchy trimmed down substantially.