Review

Damn, Ellis. Hitting us with the big questions. I mean why waffle around initial interactions with an alien species, let's just cut to the heart of whether we're a doomed species because of our incapability to change in meaningful ways in the face of a looming extinction. I kid, but this very much feels like the Mockingjay of the series. Lots of introspection. I did enjoy it, just pretty heavy.

Truth of the Divine is certainly a book of this era. I know exactly what was going on in the world while it was being written. No expectation that it would be anything else, the parallels are just quite clear. I did find myself skimming a little bit whenever the Gadsden people show up. Not because anything was badly written, more just I have more than enough knowledge to know where this is going.

I enjoyed our new POV character of Kaveh. Always spooks me a bit when the first book in a series has a single POV character and then I get to the 2nd and suddenly there's this new bozo taking up space. But he's good. A little bit too good in that most of his flaws are more spoken of in the past rather than related directly to us in the present. "I used to do X, Y, and Z, but I've grown out of it." That sort of thing. Leaves him as rather saintly. Which is fine, given where the novel goes. I do tend to just prefer flawed people as my POV.

Overall good. A worth sequel. Made me want to continue reading the series and see where exactly things go when we have this big confrontation between species. Will we truly have abandoned the human race because we're incapable of being better? Will we succeed in changing and convincing the aliens to not nuke us and join hands with them in friendship? Dunno, but I'm interested in seeing.