I should have kept complaining. I recently wrote a glowing review of the first book in the War Gods trilogyWar Dogs
After the fast paced, engaging action of War Dogs I expected this to be a pretty good follow up to lead into what I already knew was going to be a trilogy. War Dogs ends with the protagonist Michael Venn being taken into custody. This book starts with Venn in custody at Ft Lewis being held incommunicado and periodically interrogated by various people as well as talking to what are apparently the ghost or essence of some of the troops that were crystallized/turned into black glass in War Dogs. It goes downhill from there.
Apparently the groups attending the Gurus, known as Wait Staff, have split into factions with one supporting the Gurus and another thinking the Gurus are hiding something pivotal to human survival from humanity. The rest of the book is Venn being spirited away from Lewis, sent to Mars and then eventually to Saturn’s moon Titan to meet some long dead race or at least there remaining stored memories. At least that is what I think because the book takes 330+ pages to get there and at the end I was pretty confused about where I was and how I got there.
The action is pretty non-stop and pretty well-written as you would expect from a Bear novel. What I found bad was the metaphysical stream of consciousness garbage that supposedly passes for an explanation of what the hell is actually going on. I have been reading sci-fi for over 30 years and have read some pretty cryptic stuff, the Hyperion
If you read the first book and expect it the series to continue as straightforward as the first prepare to be disappointed. I cannot decide whether to recommend this book or not. I will just say this, when I finished reading it my first thought was “there is eight hours of my life I am never getting back.” I think of this as being like A Rising Thunder