I hesitated over whether to give this two or three stars, and the truth is there was a lot I liked about it. Particularly, I liked the giant space-faring aliens, which hit that sense-of-wonder button pretty well. But ultimately, this wasn't quite as good as the previous two volumes. Primarily this is to do with the antagonist, Gepta. He's never been particularly convincing as a villain, but this time he's firmly stuck at cartoon levels of evil and it's a bit hard not to just roll my eyes at him. Villains don't need to be layered to be effective, though it does help, but they do have to be more than caricature. This lack of subtlety really does stand out, but it doesn't stand alone, and I say that in the full awareness that this is not a subtle series. It's meant to be a fun action romp, but Smith is particularly heavy-handed here in that a number of his decent characters supposedly Learn Lessons about Life and it is all so very lumpen. Not to mention that pretty dreadful Deus ex Machina ending...