You really start figuring out where all the different characters that are in this book fit into the scheme of things. Another large on but still a very easy read.

It is starting to come together. Looking forward to see how it wraps up in the final book.

Even though it took me a lot longer to read this one, I think I liked it better than the second volume, chiefly because stuff happened. Through the middle of the book, the narrative remained plodding, the development of each random simworld being front and center of this story, but the end was exciting and the different pieces of the story began to fit together. Paul Jonas finally hooked up with Renie and !Xabbu, et al., who were reunited with Orlando and Fredericks, and we know a little bit more about the bird chick, whose real name is Ava, and what Dread’s real objective has been the whole time, and now he’s actually doing it. Things picked up—bottom line. And that makes a story enjoyable, even though Williams’ writing style is a bit…tiresome. Orlando dying sucks, because he was one of the more interesting characters in the story, and his relationship with Fredericks was getting pretty interesting, especially since we were staring to see things more from her perspective—I hope that continues. Other things: Sellars needs to get his rear in gear, because everybody has spent a lot of time wondering what he’s about, and the back of the van is not the place for the guy around whom the main resistance to the Grail Brotherhood revolves. There’s a lot of story left to tell, and with 1000 pages, I think that Williams has a good shot of making this overlong cyberpunk story worth the time I’ve spent reading it, that is to say, not reading other things. That puts a lot of pressure on the fourth book, but from what I understand about Williams, he’s got a habit of wrapping his stories up well. I found it slightly amusing that he had Fredericks explain why “she” didn’t like tLotR because of overdeveloped descriptions of a built world, while the author himself seems in love with outdoing Tolkien by creating infinite worlds in some crazy computer simulation. One more volume to go—will they find the kids? I certainly hope so; if not, what was it all for?

I remember on my second read that I found this book to be a bit tedious. Not so much on my third read. What a story. One of the best sci-fi series, if not the best, I've read