If you’ve been following Distant Worlds and are waiting for something big to happen, you won’t find it in this book (at least not until the end, but we’re not going to give that away). In this volume, Paul continues his travels to find his father, while incidentally discovering the detrimental effect that human activity is having on his adopted planet.
The pace of the series has slowed down to a crawl as we pass this middle point. As we’ve seen before with Leo’s stories, this hump between the first and final acts can sometimes feel a little drawn out, and it’s certainly the case with this book. There isn’t a great deal of action or even character development, except for the resolution of a couple of small side-plots. With two more books still to come, we’re left sort of wishing that the end was a bit closer.
We’ll see how it pans out in the future but, at the moment, this third volume feels like it’s been stretched a little thin.