All These Worlds (Bobiverse, #3)

This review is for books 2 and 3, which seem to be mostly one continuous work and I read in sequence.

Still loved these books. Not quite as excited as the first book, but then I'm always looking for novelty and these books just continue the ideas and story. But very nicely done for that. Compelling page turner really, and I felt he delivered well on the promise of the initial story. The only that that disturbed me was the conclusion for the Big Bad, the Others. I loved the introduction and conceit for the enemy but concluding with a genocide is, well, creepy. He writes it as creepy, and the Bobs do grapple a bit with the morality, but I hate to read a book that seems to endorse genocide in any form. Compare this to the TNG episode where Picard grapples with a similar choice vs. the Borg. I noticed the author didn't take that particularly opportunity to make a winky-wink Star Trek reference.

The place the books are a little weak is in writing other characters. It's a weirdly narcissistic book, particularly if you consider Bob as an autobiographical stand-in for the author. Which is sort of appropriate in keeping with the cloned-AI-personality theme. These latter two books allow the author to introduce more characters. Some of those relationships are poignant, particularly as Bob grapples with being immortal and yet also loving individual human people. OTOH the characters only exist as a foil for the Bobs, and are written as such. That's just the way these books are.

In a funny way these books remind me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. They're a similar grand exploration of a single sci-fi idea and its impact on human civilization over 200+ years. The difference is it's all from one character's point of view, or at least 10 very closely aligned characters. I kind of like the tidiness of that.