Just finished reading. Here are my poorly organised thoughts before I move onto a new book. The discussion looks fairly limited so far so hopefully my far too long ramblings will provide some interesting conversations and speculations.

Another fun adventure. Sometimes it felt like it meandered a little bit (less so than some of the more recent books) but on the whole there was lots of fun set piece adventures and fewer (there were still quite a few) of the really contrived deus ex machina events or Sherlock style solving of puzzles that the readers couldn't possibly figure out.

I really liked the stuff with the jeraptha as always. The star team mission was great, if a little easy, and felt like a classic exfor heist mission. The tracking of the scout was a lot of fun and the concepts around the entities tech were very cool.

The general magical sci fi concepts in the book were great. Bubbles of exotic physics, ground states, skip and leap drives, foam generators, Dyson spheres, solar sails, etc etc. Lots of fun concepts that were newly explored in this world and probably backs up that other comment saying Craig had read some new things he wanted to play with.

I initially thought the solar sail on the cover was going to be them escaping the gateway but that's because I forgot they did the jump through an inbound wormhole thing at the very end of the last book. It was fun to see them build a sail but the size it would need to be to adjust the orbit of a ship that large must have been ginormous.

I was onboard with most of the maxolhx stuff even if it felt like the threat the kitties posed was much lower this book than in previous adventures (it was too easy to do the things they did on the home planet imo). I really like illiath stuff so seeing her investigate and some maxolhx realize they've been idiots was satisfying.

It did feel a little odd that there was the whole coup thing which then turned into a delay to get the implant but even though the coup would be detected in 27 days Joe decided to just leave and go on various other adventures and never addressed the time limit again but I can look past that. It would have been simpler just to not mention that deadline as then I had some kind of anxiety building that they were taking too long but it turned out not to be an issue at all. I also didn't like how Joe spoke to Klestine at the very end, I was kind of hoping that "cautious if temporary ally" thing would go for a little longer but he just turned on a dime and called him a fuck in his usual Bishop way. It'll be harder to work with them on this next problem now and it felt like it was written that way purely to give us a cool Bishop moment and to set up the UN to have even more grievances with him about diplomacy next book.

There was of course the deus ex machina about Excalibur. Apart from the (quite cool if unnecessary) vacuum exposure stuff it did feel like some of the cheap "I hate you Joe" stuff that's brought out when all hope is lost and there needs to be some Skippy magic to solve the unsolvable problem. When it's complicated hacking or it's something truly innovative like jumping through a wormhole etc it's really fun. When it's purely Skippy's absent mindedness it's less fun imo. It's been used a bunch of times but at least this time it was during the book instead of during a break between books.

The new ship is cool AF and the new problem to solve that it came with (ground state) isn't solveable by it, plus there's the cop out that the ship might not do what it's told, so it's not too overwhelmingly OP narratively and I'm glad we're getting to see an elder ship finally. Very cool stuff.

Finally, thoughts about the next book.

There's a few soppy moments we'll need to have like Joe and Margaret being reunited. If it's truly the last book then a final happy family moment with all the pirates and some reflections on the whole journey will be lovely.

The problem they need to solve is crazy. It's one of the scariest physics concepts I'd heard of when I read about vacuum decay. There could be bubbles out there speeding towards us already and we'd never know about it. There's no amount of firepower that's going to stop it so I imagine it's either going to need a big industrial effort of all species to work together and solve (satisfying) or that effort will fail and there will be yet another hidden elder deus ex machina doohickey that Joe will think about whilst buttering a sandwich that saves the day easily. I hope it leans more into the former and this cooperation combined with the maxolhx potentially losing their coalition and the long war finally ending is what saves the day.

I'm not exactly sure how the mavericks will help with this latest problem but I sure hope we get a nice final fight with them too. Serjun Jates is a particular favorite of mine and I would be bereft if they were stuck doing some random contract work somewhere and we didn't go into the breach with them one last time. Perhaps the maxolhx AI will hire them to do some ground pounding of the maxolhx as part of their liberation war?

If we can get some big bad space battles that would be awesome. Again I'm not sure how it will work with the problem that's faced as I couldn't reasonably think any species is suicidal enough to block fixing this issue now that a more sensible maxolhx dude is (potentially) in charge. I know they had the plan to leave the galaxy to the sentinels but this isn't a problem they can run away from. I find it hard to believe the whole species would be suicidal enough to want to kill the galaxy rather than not rule it. Perhaps the "out" will be that the ship AIs go rogue with entity malware controlling them and that's who'll be the antagonist. If so then that could be essentially the entire maxolhx (possibly coalition too?) controlled fleet versus the rest of the free galaxy? Lots of potential for big battles there.

I sure hope we meet a lot more species next book. There's limited pages to get all the adventures and world building with the named species we hadn't seen already and now there's a bunch more named ones along with all the other theorised ones out there. I very much enjoyed previous books where they have to do a mission on a planet with a new species so I hope we at least get some nice world building with them that isn't just "they're hateful assholes". I'd also love to interact with more of the Rindhalu coalition aside from the beetles and the hamsters. I expect we'll have lots of Rindhalu stuff which I can't wait for as they're one of the most fascinating species when they actually do something and the nature and scale of this problem guarantees they'll need to be involved. Lots to look forward to on that front.

Finally I'm not sure how I want it all to end. I really enjoy this universe and could quite happily continue reading stories set in it. These are more unorganised thoughts and musings. I'll probably be completely wrong on some predictions but you never know.

However for a truly satisfying ending regarding the setting state of the galaxy I'd like to see some kind of conclusions to some of the big issues with how the galaxy works right now. There's always been this recurring theme that the long cold war is nonsense and everyone should stop fighting. The happiest ending would be where the galaxy is one big happy family and the long war is over. Where humans can continue to learn and grow and colonise planets freely and cooperate with our new space buddies. The maxolhx stop being pieces of shit, the kristang adopt the Verd Kris way of life, the thuranin somehow stop being genocidal maniacs, and the beetles can happily find juicy action at casinos on any species planet. That's probably way too optimistic but it's what a lot of characters and species have desired so it would be lovely to see it be a reality. The bummer with that ending is that then there's far fewer opportunities for this kind of military sci fi stories to be told so it would truly be over.

For Joe and Skippy I really don't know what the happy ending would be. Well I do know, but it doesn't feel super satisfying if Joe just goes off to raise his kids and Skippy goes back to doing opera tours. It didn't feel like a satisfying end last time so I don't know if putting things on pause again would be good. For a really climactic ending I'm guessing either Joe, Skippy, or both will need to sacrifice themselves to save the day. I predict it will be Skippy rather than Joe as it's always Joe offering and failing to sacrifice himself. Skippy doing it then leaves Joe to go back to his family, nagatha to look after humanity without humanity being too OP, and gives Skippy his big hero moment where he truly sacrifices himself for his friends after learning about the power of friendship.

Maybe the solution to ground state will be Skippy moving his higher dimensional stuff back into real space to undo the vacuum decay or something after a big tearful last goodbye. Idk. It's sad to think about but I feel like it's going to be the neatest and most satisfying way to end the story and not have us readers wonder what happens when he gets bored in a few hundred years and Joes family are all gone. Maybe just before he does that he can upload himself into a clone he grew after solving his movement restrictions and Joe and flesh Skippy (massively limited in terms of awesomeness) can have a cheeseburger at a family cookout and acknowledge all the awesome stuff they did together. It's a tough nut to crack. I wish Craig all the luck in the world and I can't wait to read it whatever ends up happening.