Gregory Benford and Larry Niven have delivered a crescendo close to their awe-inspiring Bowl of Heaven trilogy. Demonstrating how good science fiction is underwritten by good science, two of the genre’s most accomplished authors again show how to go big and convincing on ideas and tech while unleashing a galaxy’s worth of mind-bending aliens to engage with the saga’s intrepid human protagonists. For readers of the first two novels in the trilogy, Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar, the highly satisfying final act has arrived. For those who have enjoyed other works by Benford and Niven, or are new to their vast catalogs, a trilogy both grand in scale and intricate in detail awaits.

I really found this conclusion to the trilogy enjoyable. The mental imagery I could conjure up was spectacular. The final solution, though, was a bit rushed and could have used more development. A more serious criticism involved the writing style in parts, and I am not referring to the convolutions of Twisty-speak the main review mentions in the opening page of this web preview. The main characters speak in a convoluted style that sometimes is difficult to understand. Sometimes this leads to responses to something another character has said that make no sense, leaving the reader to wonder “…what the heck did that mean?…"