I liked it, but it was rather disappointing. The plot/outcome wouldn't have been that predictable, but the author shows villain POVs several times, with them a few steps ahead of the heros, and it made everything that happened next pretty obvious. There's very little characterization/character development for anyone other than the main character, and all the deaths felt very meaningless; I certainly wasn't moved to any emotion whatsoever. I mean, I suppose there isn't much point in developing characters that are only going to be around for one book because they're going to die, but if you're going to try to talk about their deaths in a way that the reader should feel the punch, you have to make them a person first.

Furthermore, the physics blah-blah could have been dumped. Yes, I know there isn't enough hard sci-fi or authors that do their research, but there's a reason for that. People are usually interested in the humans (or sentient beings) in an book. The reasons fact-explaining gets dumped for human drama and development is because that's what people want to read about. If I wanted to hear about the physics behind possible space travel, I'd pick up a textbook, or at the very least, a pop-sci non-fiction book. Though don't get me wrong: that is not really my issue with the book. I'm all for some info-dumps and the author showing their research...provided they don't sacrifice building up the characters for it.

The author does strike a good balance of human stupidity, sleaziness, and corruption, versus decency.

I will probably read the rest of the series. It is good, it just makes me sad because the book could have been really good if the characters were made more real.