Today on "why did this book take forever to finish?"
(Okay, because I haven't had a real weekend in like four weeks and that's the only time I get reading done. I'm beginning to reconsider my commitment to hosting Shabbat meals more often; they really cut into my book time.)
This is not exactly an indictment of the book--though it would be a testament to the book's quality if I had charged right through it on one of those busy weekends--since the story is interesting and Older's ongoing use of fiction to model micro-democracy continues to intrigue. Null States is the second book in a trilogy, so it does suffer from some of the ailments traditional to the middle child: it lacks the luster of the first book that introduces the series premises and the resolution of the final book that ties everything up. It spends a lot of time either examining the aftermath of the previous book or setting up the mysteries of the third book, which leaves little space for it to be its own thing. The stories in the book are interesting, but they are almost more interesting as a series of linked short stories between this book and the next. It is the characters that tie them together and--my own biases are obvious here--I am notoriously AWFUL at remembering characters from one book to the next. So the "who are you and why do I care about your love life?" is a never-ending problem for me as a reader. (I could probably put together my top ten list for the year out of books whose main characters I remember without having to look them up.)
This sounds damning and its not. Once I finally had time this Friday night to finish the book, I did enjoy the discrete narratives and Older's investigation into how micro democracy works when it's actually supposed to be working. And the story she's setting up for book three is already interesting so I will keep reading if only for that.
Like The Two Towers, Null States is the kind of middle book that works best when you read the whole narrative in one go.