{mild spoilers ahead}
After the great first two novels, this was a pretty big disappointment to me. While the overall story arch (Holden) is interesting, the other three narratives ranged from boring to aggravating, at least in my opinion. The whole revenge plot seemed at times really ridiculous, like a desperately bad plot device turned deus ex machina. The whole priest plot aggravated me because it is so utterly Christian, which I am just not a fan of - at least not in my sci-fi novels. Even the Bull plot was full of mentions of God, giving me the feeling that this whole series might turn into a ridiculous search for God or something. It's the future and we've colonized space, do we really need religion?! And WHY does it have to be Christianity, when it's foreseeably not even the biggest religion on the planet in 200 year's time? Why not Hinduism or Buddhism, if the authors so desperately want religion? Well, they're American, of course, what else do they know. That's pretty apparent in Anna's plot as well. First of all why is she a Methodist from Russia, when the largest religious group in Russia is orthodox and protestants make up 1% in Russia? Second of all, why does she have a "college fund" for her daughter, which is like the most American thing ever? Feels a bit poorly researched this book, on top of all the annoying "God" content.

Other than that, I think the whole plot was dragged out way too much. I think it could have been told much better in just half the time. Anyway, I'll start book 4 soon, but if it's full of God again, I might just throw these out the window.

This was certainly a major improvement over the terrible book 3, but it's still by no means perfect (the slugs were a bit ridiculous). It feels like an interesting introduction of what's to come... can't wait to keep reading these books.

Wow, what a thrillride! This book is soo much better than the deeply flawed book 3 and the mediocre book 4 - though it's still not perfect.

Spoiler

What I really don't understand are the motivations of some of the characters - why would Amos want to visit 'Peaches'?! It doesn't make sense at all, and also, that was one of the worst characters of the previous books and I was not happy for her to pop up again. Similarly, I cannot fathom Naomi's motivation to go back to an obviously dangerous, toxic, manipulative abuser. No woman in her right mind would ever do that. Pretty much all the reasons that these character had for leaving seemed like lame pretenses just to break up the crew and get everyone in position so we can experience all the stuff happening from their perspectives...

What is this book, even? It's hard to tell. So little happens. Similar to book 3, the entire story could have been told in about a third of the book. There are just too many characters here, many of which don't add any significant insight to the story (Clarissa... 🙄) and just drag out the end forever. Everything important literally happens in the last 3 chapters of the book. Way too many things remain unexplained, like

Spoiler

the whole thing with the disappearing ships and why that's even happening. I still don't know the reasons for the great mystery behind the alien races and planets. And I miss Miller (seriously). Is that stuff ever gonna be explained? *sigh*

. I hope eventually it will have been worth it reading these books, but I have the suspicion that I won't find out until 2019.

Well, this was a game changer for the series. I'm glad that some long forgotten plot points seem to finally be coming back, albeit slowly. Can't wait for the conclusion to the series in book 8 and 9.

The second volume dives deeper into the dreamscape, as we get to know more of the consequences of Morpheus' capture, while this volume also prepares the later ones...