Wrapped up the first book after much struggle. Am I crazy for finding it extremely poorly written? Writing aside, the characters suck, the motivations suck, and the scenario building feels like it was tossed together by a 12 year old. I don’t get the hype. Everything is paper thin. The fictional science aspect is the most compelling part but as a cohesive whole it fails to land.
and the third book is even better.
But I agree with OP that the writing is bad, I just enjoy the intrigue and sci-fi enough to read the books, esp. at that particular part of the second book (the first book and first part of the second book were admittedly less compelling to me than the rest of the second book and the third book).