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That pretty much sums it up. This book is basically two stories. The first part revolves around nerdy orbital dynamics descriptions with a sprinkle of politics and psychology. It makes sense and is mildly interesting but a bit much. The background research is, as usual for Neil Stephenson, quite impressive. The sorry elements is not the main part of this book. There are a few surprises in the beginning and end of each part. But most of the book is rather straight forward.

All-in-all Seveneves is an interesting series of what-ifs and an elaborate exploration of what these ifs could lead to.

It's a fairly slow paced presentation of a long series of events with a couple of sudden twists at the end of each part. This presents a sudden moment of "huh...?" at those points.

Rather light reading, probably targeting a wider audience. The main story was ok, with some cheap tricks to grab your attention early on. Phrases like "If only they hadn't..." and "They were the lucky ones..." are used frequently which to me felt more like spoiling the surprise than anything else.

Some characters develop pretty far but sometimes this is very sudden and hard to accept. The book is loosely based on the computer game, but this is mainly by mentioning some tech here, and some civilizations there.

A large portion of the environmental description focuses on describing what seems like misunderstood concepts in astrophysics. While that doesn't necessarily mean poor sci-fi, this book gave me the impression that the author skimmed through some out-dated low quality popular science magazine as the background research.

All in all and ok read.

pff, the dying star was a failed attempt at showing off. It felt like reading a physics text book which skipped the proof reading stage.

Let's see if this is worth reading...

I wasn't at all impressed by this. After reading Ender's shadow, this book didn't add that much new. It introduced some new perspectives and angles on events, but not too interesting. The new story elements were (appropriately?) overshadowed but the main plot in Ender's game. Maybe it would be more interesting for someone who hasn't already read Ender's game.

Pretty interesting wrap up but some parts felt like unnecessary filling material. Large portions are spent on presenting geography and listing various religious and cultural groups. This is somewhat necessary to get an idea of the scale of events but it's done in a dull and repetitive way. That said, the main story was interesting and well worth reading, although I can't help thinking that it could have been condensed to about half as long without losing anything important.

Endymion felt mostly like an introduction to book four. No big reveals, no major plot twists. There was some development of the backstory and the larger scale conflicts, but not much. An interesting read, but not as enveloping and intense as the second book.

Summary of the state of the world from an energy and natural resources perspective.

The second book in the series is ramping up the epicness. We get a glance at the technocore's AI-ecosystem, the religious factions and a few hints at how the story might grow to encompass much bigger scales (over both space and time). And of course, the final showdown at Hyperion. There is double crossing, spectacular losses, plenty of background story and some character development.

Simmons keeps throwing poetry at the reader, and I keep skipping it or skimming through it at a glance. The more interesting aspects are the way the ousters and the AI are presented, and the division in the hegemonic leadership. We keep following the pilgrims, but to me this was mostly interesting as a bridge from the the first book.