All These Worlds by Dennis E. TaylorMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jacket Blurb: Being a sentient spaceship really should be more fun. But after spreading out through space for almost a century, Bob and his clones just can't stay out of trouble.
They've created enough colonies so humanity shouldn't go extinct. But political squabbles have a bad habit of dying hard, and the Brazilian probes are still trying to take out the competition. And the Bobs have picked a fight with an older, more powerful species with a large appetite and a short temper.
Still stinging from getting their collective butts kicked in their first encounter with the Others, the Bobs now face the prospect of a decisive final battle to defend Earth and its colonies. But the Bobs are less disciplined than a herd of cats, and some of the younger copies are more concerned with their own local problems than defeating the Others.
Yet salvation may come from an unlikely source. A couple of eighth-generation Bobs have found something out in deep space. All it will take to save the Earth and perhaps all of humanity is for them to get it to Sol — unless the Others arrive first.
Read as an audio book.
This cannot be read as a stand alone. Please start with book number one: We Are Legion (We Are Bob). Is it worth it? YES!
I quite enjoyed this third installment in the Bobiverse series. I wanted to say final installment, because nearly everything is wrapped up all quite tidy like, but I see there might be a book four. That would be most excellent.
What I quite enjoyed about this series is, it isn't all happy ever afters. The Bobs must deal with their immortality across the whole universe as they watch loved ones grow old and pass on, as they decide who will live and who may die in the face of the Others, deciding if genocide is the answer to genocide, and not understanding why more humans don't want to become an immortal.
What really grounds this story is that while the Bobs are busy saving the universe, dealing with surmountable challenges and facing their own immortality, they remain, for the most part, human. They still grieve, feel anger, cry, laugh, grow frustrated and make snarky comments. The Bobs try to retain and improve human aspects in each and every Manny they make, in improving their VR rooms, in blending in with humanity. Do they nail it? Of course not, and that's what makes this such a good read.
Plus there's a lot of interesting philosophical questions being asked in this series.
What I did struggle with was too much time between book number two and book number three - almost a year exactly! I did spend some time trying to figure out which Bob was on which world doing exactly what again? And that detracted from the over all story, which was a shame.
Overall, a great series with wonderful world-building, interesting philosophical questions, and a delightful cast of Bobs. Recommended!
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