This occupies a similar enjoyment level to reading Dune, for me. There’s certainly a wild and theoretical bent to it, embedded, that will grind against hard scifi fans. But similar to Dune, the plot is old school genre, meaning it exists to interrogate social and societal constructs—and it does so very effectively. Where it shines beyond Dune, though, is that it also manages to be very inclusive and raise more relevant, granular questions at the same time. Specifically around gender.

All while maintaining a really interesting narrative voice that changes sometimes, just as the first did, directly engaging with the reader, since the text is a faux, future historical document meant for consumption, and is up front about the documentarians bringing their own perspective and biases into it. It becomes riveting in doing so, even when large sections are dialogues and discussions, like being privy to a senate meeting. It takes exceptional skill to pull off such sections.

Similarly, directly confronting some pretty intense subject matter is handled really well. At the start of the book there is the equivalent of trigger warnings placed because the user is accessing a file. There’s a blasé approach to inclusion that I favour and find always very effective. There’s no need to defend it, it is simply normalized, immediately.

The revelations from the first are largely satisfying as well, though the moralizing about certain things feel somewhat less convincing. Especially with a character grappling with power, which felt fairly cookie-cutter. Everything else, however, is excellent. By far one of the more interesting scifi books I’ve read. Interested to see what the next two books will be focused on.