RogerBW's Blog

2025 science fiction novella, last of its trilogy. Ada must sneak in to not-SpaceX headquarters and hack the nanites that will fix Earth's ecosystem so that they actually do the job.

This was something of a let-down for me, I'm afraid. I've read the previous books and I know how Ada works; she says explicitly that she has another goal as well as the one we know about, and given what she did in the previous book it's very clear roughly what form that goal will have to take. Meanwhile she and government agent Rian continue to have obvious Feelings for each other, but by the end of it all we're back where we were, with him being a lawman who still believes in the corrupt system and her being a lawbreaker who's trying to work round it. All right, I don't demand a perfect happy ending, but I'd like an ending to the emotional arc as well as one to the procedural shenanigans.

And then apparently univat n oht va gur tnynkl-jvqr pbzzhavpngvbaf argjbex yrgf lbh ernq rirelguvat tbvat guebhtu vg, orpnhfr rapelcgvba nccneragyl qbrfa'g rkvfg. Which is consistent with the soft science fiction style of the series but certainly did not make me feel happier about it when it was revealed as a major plot point.

All the hard character work of this series was done in the second book, and I loved it. But, I suppose in another example of building up tension being easier to make exciting than resolving it, this one felt as though it were following the tracks already laid out.