The Quantum Thief was amazing. I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing about what I should expect – a lot of the charm of The Quantum Thief was all about figuring out how the world works, while also keeping up with the absolute power and momentum of the characters involved – gods, gods who didn't know they were gods, their toys, their toys about to kill some gods, and so on. The Fractal Prince was … not terrible? It introduces another world for us to figure out, but we know so much of the background already that the story gets bogged down between a) figuring out the local mystery and how it fits into the larger picture, and b) making us guess what the inscrutable infinitely tricky gods of this world are planning in their multiple-personality war (which I didn't even attempt to solve, because it felt intentionally obscured). I did enjoy the backstory parts! But other than that, this book was a very pleasant drag. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Having a really hard time rating this book, or even summing up its plot, a year after the fact. I did re-read the first to parts to be prepared, which was a very good idea. I remember that when I read the book, I could tell the Sobornost tribes apart and had an idea of who was double-crossing whom. But all things considered, this book had as little emotional resonance as the second one, and in hindsight, it gets hard to tell the two apart. The third leans more into the whole cyberpunk surfing-the-information-web vibe, and … that's alright, but nowhere near as great as the overwhelming ball of weird brilliance that the first book gave us. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Maybe I'm just not one for spy stories, but this one didn't do much for me. The whole WWII, but in a super weird spiritual realm that clearly has some crucial problems, plus some generic spy stuff left me cold, and after the first third I couldn't even be bothered to keep track of who was selling out whom. I expect this will work better if you have a higher tolerance for spy bullshit. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.