Wrapped up the first book after much struggle. Am I crazy for finding it extremely poorly written? Writing aside, the characters suck, the motivations suck, and the scenario building feels like it was tossed together by a 12 year old. I don’t get the hype. Everything is paper thin. The fictional science aspect is the most compelling part but as a cohesive whole it fails to land.
I think books 2 and 3 could easily be separated into many short stories.
Or probably the other way around, book 1 was so successful that he stuck various unfinished short stories together to make 2 & 3.