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An overall satisfying conclusion to the series, but wow is it a wild ride (including the obligatory civil war) to get there. And the big secrets about how the enclaves were built? WOW

I’ll admit to getting somewhat frustrated at the “so here’s the really simple solution that just came to me at the last minute” that is just shy of deis ex machina, but it works out.

I wonder if this is why things like PPD-20 and NSPM-21 were written as classified documents.

Wow if this isn’t a reminder this book is nearly 10 years old because, uh, not quite how that really shook out.

This is very clearly one of those things where we’re just getting some random bits of info to set the stage for the next part of the series.

I definitely liked getting to peer into the heads of more characters!

It’s really interesting how many of the things put forth as “cyber warfare” in the first chapter (looking at US surge in Iraq 2007-8) are neither how US mil has defined cyber nor war - lots of intelligence, some info ops and MISO, but not really hacking for effect, which is a key part of today’s definition.

Just goes to show how language changes over time.

Because the effects are not in the cyber domain, you’re seeing lots of what we’d call cross-domain activities - taking what you learn from cyberspace activities and using it to have impacts in the physical domain (mostly kill/capture during these pages).

This has one of the most bizarre methods of handling endnotes that I’ve seen.

Instead of putting some sort of identifier in the text alerting the read to the existence of an endnote, there’s simply a bunch of endnotes. Identified by the page number. And the start of the sentence the note applies to.

It hurts.

(More of a paraphrase than a quote because audiobook)

This… this is what every creator, regardless of medium, I know is like. Sometimes the art is how you cope with the bad, process it… sometimes the art is as necessary as breathing. But it’s an essential part of the people who are truly creators, and they are markedly different if they’re not creating.

New narrator alert! (Similar enough to the previous narrator to not be extremely jarring, but it’s always risky doing a narrator change during a series)

I’m not really sure what to say about this one that I haven’t already said. Probably this is a really good example of “if you don’t know what women want out of relationships, it’s probably because you’re not listening to what they’re telling you.”

Do expect a decent bit of last-minute saving of our protagonists, some sadness (okay, lots of sadness), but overall a good way to wrap up this stage of the story.

This is a really good history of wargaming, up until it was written in 1968. What I really like is it’s an honest discussion of what wargaming is, and what it isn’t (the latter perhaps being more important).

And the last chapter? No spoilers, but wow. Just wow.

If you are at all interested in war games, this is a really good read.

Big oof

“He” being David Singer.

This reveals a couple of issues with trying to quantify all the things. First being that trying to turn documents into math is… weird. And that what you collect is not ground truth - it has been filtered, screened. Even personal diaries do not contain the whole truth.

And goes on to explain that the data collected from simulations, from war games, are not actually all that great because there’s lots of manipulation that happens to control the game environment.

Holy heck the PTSD and the red flags and the efforts to just suppress everything you are to be normal and get through this is… ooof.

Being old enough to recognize all of this makes listening physically uncomfortable/anxiety inducing, yet it’s a compelling story and I can’t turn away.

If you’re thinking “ah! I know this trope and so I know basically what the plot is!” you are probably correct.

But.

Nothing is ever quite that simple. From the particular details of what it takes to make things better, to the absolutely delicious character of the guy you instantly know is bad news, this is superb execution of the genre.

Also, I cried.

Jennifer Ikeda’s narration is excellent.