Silas

An amazing voice cast and bookend to this first trilogy in the series. I waited with breath abated for this next version to the graphic audio epic. 

A nice weekend book with a dark, but not grounded twist. It leaves you begging the question of who truly is wicked when the distinguishing factor is self control and empathy.

Service Model deftly explores how little free will and consciousness matter in the absence of meaning and purpose. In a world where we can clearly see that the end result of our capitalist society is cascading failure and inequality, when or how do we exit the conveyor belt leading to us straight into the compactor?

Let the boy just watch his dramas!

I loved it. The anti hero they have been forced into becoming. The ambiguity of their army's cause. The descent into becoming warriors. The foreshadowing and the conclusion I was afraid was coming turned out to be correct. Incredible. 

This is the kind of book I've always wanted to read in science fiction. Everything from the speculative science, the political intrigue, the explosion of both space and the psyche, the logistics, the planets, extraterrestrial life, the sweet references, oh my it's so good. 

An incredible start to an epic revolution of the proletariat in a beautifully stark and unequal future civilization. The voice acted version from graphic audio was breathtaking. 

This was an interesting change and almost departure after finishing the initial Mistborn trilogy. My understanding is that it is all connected in one way or another, though it wasn't immediately apparent. I will admit that the setting peaked my curiosity, though it bored me just as well. It feels much more like a side story, and in that it has merit. 

I loved the turn from the first book's themes of fighting for liberation against oppression, becoming an oppressive liberator yourself, juggling the truths you must hide to protect your power and the pace. Fighting the guilt of a knowingly committing genocide. Us an audience knowing what the gods truly are already. The deep dive into the realities of leftist revolution and how even that doesn't mean liberation from patriarchy and totalitarianism if not done by the people and for the people, but then also showing how volatile the masses can be. The refusal to tow the line and stop at just the immediate oppressor above you, but ALL of them, no matter the consequences. The realistic and unexpected fallacies from the characters. The phoenix revival, the space battle, the super cool space station that reminded me of Sea of Stars. There's so much to love here that puts this among my favorites. 6/5 read

The final battle was jarringly abrupt. I felt like I coasted and suddenly hit the ending like a wall.

Jeanette Illidge absolutely elevated this book. Her vocal versatility with accents, with, dialects, and more kept me well engaged. The story, to me, wasn't anything I hadn't experienced from anime. Therefore, the bulk of the entertainment came from Davi's portrayal and her ability to breathe life into every other character, with an ability you'd often see in full cast audiobooks. On its own, the story is about a 3. Jeanette's performance is a 5. I want to bring it to a 4, but I'm hesitant. It wasn't bad. It was good. It wasn't great. But it was pretty good. So 3.75.

As far as trilogy conclusions go, this was decently good. The otherworldly crossover was neat, even though I'm not familiar with the rest of Maas' series yet. The explanation for the nature of the civilization tied in decently, even though I felt the lack of presence from the main villain until the very end was jarring. On that same note, there being little depiction of the other villain characters made sense as far as the pacing and packing things in, but there was a lot of fluff that could've been removed to make room for more lore. I tuned out at the sex scenes or skipped them altogether, because they didn't add much for me, which then felt a bit irksome when they resulted in development in Bryce's or Umbra's powers. The foreshadowing and exploration of the different races, the villain's impact on the world did it for me. I also quite liked the identity of the Librarian/Priest witch lady being revealed, though it was a bit unsatisfying. Did she truly turn enemies into creatures?