Science Fiction

This seems like an unpopular opinion, but I quit after 3 books. The first book was great, the second not as good, the third confirmed some consistent discouraging writing patterns from the second.

My biggest complaint is that I started the series for the sci-fi concepts and plotlines, but it quickly became a standard political procedural, with action and drip-reveal mystery elements, and the actual sci-fi elements felt unnecessary and incidental. Or to put it a different way, with rare exceptions, there just weren't reliable sci-fi "big ideas" introduced after the first book, just a lot of human drama and plot that felt like it didn't require the sci-fi setting.

I also felt like some pacing was off and there was a ton of filler. What confirmed that for me was when I noticed the chapter dividers in my reading app and saw nearly every chapter was almost identical length. My guess is the authors worked backwards from a chapter outline with a planned word count for publisher deliverables. If that type of planning sounds more like a business then it does art, I'd say that's actually my experience reading it too.

Finally, one of my pet peeves for any type of believable drama is when conflict is created by people acting stupidly. Kind of the opposite of deus ex machina resolution, it's a transparently artificial conflict that is just meant to give the characters something to do, but lazy writing. I felt that many many times by the second and third books.

Again, I'm in a minority I guess, but I felt it just wasn't worth the time. Not as bad as Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (my all time worst offender for filler and lazy plot), but lots of squeeze for little juice.