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A review by thearbiter89
Dark State by Charles Stross
5.0
I will be honest. I furiously sped-read Empire Games and this book over a three day period in the December holidays and therefore my memory of the books is basically a single jumble and at this point it's impossible to distinguish - also on account of the fact that I see the books less as three distinct entries in a trilogy and more like a single, on-running story chopped into three parts for commercial and editorial reasons.
In that sense, though, I feel like while my comments on Dark State echo that of the first book, I liked this better simply because while the first book was mostly setup, this middle book is the series running at full tilt, with some actual tentative interactions between the US and NAC characters mediated by Rita, who Stross has written to be more interesting than might have been expected from her archetype of shiftless post-millennial with parental abandonment issues. And, way out of left field, there are some tantalising space opera elements creeping in too...
I give this: 4.5 out of 5 Orion-class Space Dreadnoughts
In that sense, though, I feel like while my comments on Dark State echo that of the first book, I liked this better simply because while the first book was mostly setup, this middle book is the series running at full tilt, with some actual tentative interactions between the US and NAC characters mediated by Rita, who Stross has written to be more interesting than might have been expected from her archetype of shiftless post-millennial with parental abandonment issues. And, way out of left field, there are some tantalising space opera elements creeping in too...
I give this: 4.5 out of 5 Orion-class Space Dreadnoughts