The sci-fi elements are fantastic, and so is the scope of the story. There are enough concepts in this book to make 2-3 novels, easily. It takes some time getting into, there is a lot of world building, but once you are in, the inner logic of the universe takes over and you follow the story quite easily.

That being said, I enjoyed this book but didn’t totally love it. I never truly connected with the characters, maybe because there are so many of them and they have opposite goals. There is character development, twist and turns, but for some reason I feel like there was always something missing between the plot and the characters. I also believe that the book could have been 100 pages shorter, some portion on the Tines world are overdone and get repetitive. The mechanics of the Zones and of space travel and battles are also quite complicated at times. Which is fine in itself but can get a bit tedious at times.