Spreading into the wider System, Cato is confronted with the full scope of his crusade. Tens of thousands of worlds or more, beings capable of destroying planets, and even stricter limitations on technology if he doesn’t want to show is hand early.
All he has are his two agents and a few dubious allies. If he were a being of flesh and blood, forced to go planet by planet in a slow march from one end of the System to the other, it would be the work of thousands or millions of years. But Cato is of Sol, a postbiological citizen with no such restrictions, and he can move in ways that no conventional human could.
The System may be immense, and the people within it have powers impossible to a technological civilization, but Cato has exponential growth.
The previous book in the series ends with Cato freeing one planet from the oppressive artificiality of the System. Now he has to do the same thing on as many planets as possible simultaneously, facing resistance from enemies who take him seriously. The author digs deeper into why someone might support the System, although some of the arguments are better than others. From my November newsletter
I don't even see how this series would end. The protag is basically a bully that wants to take away magic from everyone.
He got the invasive magic off Earth. Now he is going around and forcing people back into the stone age (temporarily), until they learn to be self sufficient to grow and make meals, and not having food magically supplied to them.
I will read the sequel, but unlike the Paranoid mage series, the protag in this is not defending his right for autonomy from the evil wizards. He already got that. He is going around bringing 'Freedom" to other worlds.
I wonder if he will have some introspection and realise that a lot of people are happy with their lot in life.
Big changes and cool expansion of the characters and world. One of the challenges in this set up was that a lot of time had to pass in book 2, but the author did a good job doing that without feeling like it was either slow to read or skipped too much.
I'm not sure how it's all going to end, which is really great. :) Looking forward to the final book in the trilogy.