Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

This was the perfect ending to the perfect series. There were a lot of extremely complicated, multi-layered things going on in this universe, and somehow all the threads got tied up in a satisfactory way. All the mystic time-travel-y underpinnings of the series became a perfect closed loop that actually made sense. Aside from an exciting plot, the prose really sings.

_Molly Fyde and The Fight For Peace_ also successfully dealt with the thorny problem of what to do with your young characters who have an epic love but are still teenagers yet have been through so many hair-raising adventures that they are almost like world-weary old people. If you found the ending of the Harry Potter series a tiny bit cloying in terms of the way it show more displayed the characters living happily ever after, you will find the approach Hugh Howey takes here a welcome antidote.

If this series is new to you, you better not jump in with this book because it wouldn't make any sense. Start with the first one, _Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue_, which is a fairly straightforward space opera. But as the series goes along, it becomes deeper and bloodier and picks up more characters. My favorite character in the whole series was Edison, who is this big creature who looks kind of like a panda bear and speaks in a ridiculously stilted and technical way (like, "My exuberance overcame my ability to forgo immediate gratification," when he hugs his friend too hard.) His dialogue usually made me laugh. It was over a year since I read the previous book in the series, and I was worried that I wouldn't remember what the hell was going on. But everything came back to me vividly as I read.

Now, about some things that a lot of people don't care about but I do. The book was attractively packaged and nicely laid out. I came across maybe two misspelled words, no big deal. I liked the cover a lot, but my girlfriend thought it was really strange. "Why is a baby playing with a wrench set? That makes no sense." You actually don't find out what the cover means until almost the end of the book.

I would recommend this series to people who like Scott Westerfeld's "The Risen Empire" books or pretty much any kind of thought-provoking science fiction. I was a little bummed when I finished this book because it was all over, but at some point I will go back to the first book and start again. For some reason it's more satisfying to be a fan of a great series that no one you know has ever heard of than it is to be the ten millionth person to like "The Hunger Games." But it is a little unfair that the rest of the world has been living in ignorance about Molly Fyde, so let's not keep this series a secret. show less

Hurried to get through this book. Enjoyed this fourth book the least, even though the characters and the story are still interesting. I did not like interspersed back stories of the characters. Jumping back in time to give back stories seems odd in the last book of a series, plus, not only was the continuity broken by these flashbacks, there were flashbacks in these flashbacks. That is the main reason for my downgrading the rating for this book.
— Rebecca

After breezing through the first 3 books, I really bogged down on this one. The story was interrupted by multiple obscenely long flashbacks that did nothing to advance the plot or add sufficient depth to the characters to be worthwhile. As a result, the actual "present day" story seemed almost like an afterthought, and I kept forgetting what was going on when I finally got back to it.
Thankfully, it does finally gel towards the end, with a bittersweet yet satisfying conclusion to the series.

3.5 stars rounded up

Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace (The Bern Saga Book 4) by Hugh Howey

I've said it before and I'll say it again I love the Molly Fyde series. The books just keep getting better. They also keep demanding more attention to the details. We've been watching Molly Fyde grow throughout the series. We're learning more about her family-some we seem to be left to guess at, If I have one complaint about this the fourth book, it would be that there were a lot of things I'd have liked to know that there just wasn't time for

This time the format is done somewhat differently- we have the story developing with interspersed backstory. I think that some people found this to be a difficult book because of that. There have been some suggestions that they show more were unnecessary. I didn't feel that way and I'll tell you why.

The first three novels contain a lot of very good world building. Up to this point the worlds have been used as the means to establish part of each character's motivations. This time we dig deeper into the lives of some of these characters so that we can better decide if we should empathize with them or be happy to leave them to their fate. This results in making this a long novel and where some might suggest it should be shorter with less backstory I beg to differ because I can think of at least one more backstory I'd love to have heard and I can't think of any that I'd give up to hear it.

I have to say that I was disappointed that there was no backstory for Cat. Cat is such a complex multifaceted character that I would have loved to see deeper into her inner motivation to understand what makes her work and made her decide the path she took. As I've mentioned I wouldn't give up any of the space used for the other characters so I'll have to be happy with what we have.

When we left the characters in book three Cole was trying to save Molly's father, Molly was planning a multilayer invasion plan to steal ships for her small mixed force. Anlyn and Edison have inadvertently joined the Hyperspace team that are overtaking the Bern ships one by one. Walter is making secret deals for untold fortune not realizing that he's jeopardizing everyone and the entire combat plan.

Anlyn is going to have to spearhead the space conflict. Walter is going to have to make several critical decisions that are going to be fatal for someone. Cat is going to come through in heroic fashion despite herself.

Nothing goes quite as planned. Dr Ryke and Molly's mother-the ship- must attempt to return to the rift inside of Hyperspace and try to undo what was done so long ago. The Wadi once again plays a major part. Most importantly there's a lot of previously unknown threads and revelations that come out of the backstory that explain much of what has happened that its vitally important to read it all carefully, No scanning allowed.

We even get to find out who the Bern Seer is but you are going to have to read this to find this all out.

Once again I recommend this to all those people who love Military SF Tense Thrillers Sci-Fi Fantasy Speculative Science notions.

Thank Hugh Howey for a world full of entertainment and a job well done.

J.L. Dobias show less

Wow, it's been a long time since I have been so emotionally involved with all the characters in a book. I hated to see this one end.

I was strangely sad to have these come to an end - great stories!