Dan

Prequels rarely work, and this book is no exception.

The author spends hundreds of pages building up to a revelation we already knew from Book 1, so there’s no real suspense. It adds nothing substantial to the story that would justify its length. Honestly, this could have worked as a short novella—but not as a 600-page novel.

Skip it and hope Book 3 delivers something better.

Fun and entertaining

Short, fun, entertaining.

This is confusing and random. Half the time I have no idea whats going on, who is speaking to whom, what it is about or why I am even reading this instead of a better book.

Boring AF, nothing really happening. This is another of those wannabe highbrow books in the vain of ‘A Memory Called Empire'. Lot's of dialogue where the author tries to load it with layers and subtext, unfortunately this is so far fetched that the protagonist explains the hidden meaning of the dialogues afterwards because no one would get that.
There is a very interesting world, an interesting enemy, interesting politics, space travel etc. etc but it does not really get explored. Instead we get treated to mundane problems of a, granted, interesting protagonist. I wished this was more scifi and less drama.
DNF the series. :(

Meh. Half the book is boring AF and it ends in a cliffhanger. Not going to continue.

Typical Baxter, grand intriguing idea, boring executing.

Finally a scifi story that revolves around actual scifi elements and does not want to be a drama. It has everything you want. I am not the biggest fan of the writing though, coupled with a few logic flaws makes that 3,75 star read for me

This was a miss, basically one big battle scene mostly of boring one on one battles.
Don't get me wrong, the author does battles very well but if the whole book only consists of battles it gets old very fast.

too long for what it is.

What a mixed bag. Does not live up to the hype but I can see why pople like it.
it's over the top, pedal to the metal fantasy turned up to 11. I don't think the way of story telling the author employed here is for me though. It feels so random at times.

This is basically 3 novellas combined in a book with an overarching plot. Did I see the ending coming from light years away? yep. Was I entertained anyways? Yeah-ish. 
I like his writing, it's fun, witty, easy to understand, but do I wanna experience it 13 books long? probably not. It's not as clever as it wants to be.

There are some passages/chapters that are magical but most of it is just so slow and boring. If I did not read this as part of a buddy read, I would have dnfed that early. I wished I had.

That was nice, best of the 3.Fizzled out at the end a bit but I was very well entertained for the most part

Well, that did not live up to the hype at all but at least it was not boring.

Fun, but not as much as book 1

That was a fun ride. Nothing more, nothing less. I was entertained.

This was a great read. Shitty cliffhanger though

This book tries so hard to be so clever but fails miserably. We get pages upon pages on pseudo philosophical rambling, like the author is explaining the most basic concepts to a toddler. On top of that we can witness the MC having irrational relationship fights for no reason other than drama. Yiekes.

What an improvement to the previous book. I like that a lot.

This is another one of those ‘scifi in name only books'. 95% of the story could have taken place anywhere but since it's a talky book and I like talky books I continued on. Now, with talky books, you need intelligent characters having intelligent dialogue so that when you read a conversation you get goosebumps. Did the author manage to do that here? no, not by a long shot. The Author tries to put layer upon layer of subtext, double and triple meaning in every little gesture in every dialogue that ultimately everything turns out to be almost meaningless. Luckily she recognised this and had the MC's sidekick or the MC's inner monologue explain the actual meaning of every line, making it unnecessarily long and pointless.
This book is a masterclass in ignoring ‘show, don't tell'. We get told about aliens, yet never meet any. We get told about spaceships, yet never see any, we get told about jump gates, yet never use any let alone learn how they work, probably magic, I don't know. There is very little ‘sci' here.
80% of the book is buildup to the last 20% which are somewhat promising for the second book. But having a whole book as setup for a second book, which other authors put on the blurb, is a bit much, for my taste.

All in all it kinda feels like a more highbrow, less interesting, less fun version of ‘The Collapsing Empire' by Scalzi with all the scifi elements taken out.

Liked it, did not love it. Enjoyable but a bit tropey and simple.
Bought book 2

Typical Tchaikovsky. Great beginning, great end, lots of meandering boring pages in the middle.
I adore the man for his great, unique, mind boggling ideas but I can not get onboard with the execution. The author can't write dialogue for the life of him and relies on repetitive, sloggy inner monologue and info dumps. It's just not for me.

Meh, not really scifi, more of deep dive into the mind of an asshole

If you like following girls shopping for dresses and shoes, this one is for you.
If you like cool, adult epic scifi, this one is not for you.

The ending was kinda cool though, I have to admit. Not cool enough to keep on reading though.