Great continuance of the Circuit series picking up right after Vale dropped his bombshell from book one, out to gather allies in his revolution and finding out that things never go quite to plan. Adim, on the other hand, is someone I continually want to ascribe as a character separate and growing from Vale, and he is, but since the two are never twain and their wills are almost never apart, it's easy to combine the two characters as one super-character. :) And that's not really that far off the mark, honestly.

Talon has had it hard, but he's regaining his balance and discovering that he's the real hero of the tale, and far from being listless and depressed due to his circumstance, he's ready and able to throw off his shackles and join the fight.

Most surprising, I think, is Sage's tale of breaking free and finding a goal to live by. Hers may be the best of the three interweaving character arcs, but that might simply be my mood. And maybe it's the pathos. I love to see these three shoot across the sky and intersecting in strange orbital arcs.

Are you ready for War? There's plenty of feels for ya and the life in the solar system is going to be quite chaotic from here on out. I know I'm hooked. ( )

Update 12/13/16:

ON SALE NOW! ;)


Old review:

Thanks goes to Netgalley and the author for this ARC!

This is the conclusion to Mr. Bruno's Circuit trilogy, and I hope he'll forgive me for saying so, but I honestly believe they should all be read together in a single swoop. After all, this is where all the main characters finally band together and where the growing action and the final epic conclusion cumulates. I understand the need to split them up, and each book is worthwhile, but I can't help but wish that they were all bound together as one enormous volume. It would be pretty darn epic. :)

War.

It's brutal, here, and Vale practically stops at nothing to become a wrecking machine, having let ADIM, his abomination of an android, loose upon the solar system to gain ever more freedom of agency and independence, becoming the single most powerful piece in the war. It is beautiful.

The whole novel turns into a very satisfying conclusion for the entire series based upon religious and resource conflicts hovering above the shadow of the ruined earth. All the tragedies and the bonds of the main characters have become something rather special, but it's the personal tragedy of Vale, arguably the greatest villain of the books, that affects me the most. He's consistently the one character that seems bigger than life and also the one to nearly transcend it in his regrets even as he becomes a nearly single-handed wrecking ball. He's not a simple character, but he is easily my favorite among all the main characters.

I totally recommend this series to fans of Space-Opera and world-building (or destroying). This is a future taking place a few hundred years from now with many settlements across the Solar System and a vastly changed social structure. It should appeal to many SF fans, but I can't recommend reading this out of order of the rest of the trilogy! Together, they make up a pretty awesome tale. :)
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