Just finished Dark Age...disappointed

Man, I really enjoyed Iron Gold and thought it was setting up for an epic book, and I saw that GoodReads had DA at 4.5 stars, but I felt that Dark Age was just a mess. Did anyone else struggle with this one?

Quick thoughts:

PROS

  • Darrow felt just as real and flawed as in IG, but he had some redemption in this book including his wife and son showing a belief in his sacrifice.
  • Virginia's perspective started out refreshing and I enjoyed the political jockeying in it.
  • The band of Lyria, Volga, and Victra worked very well once they arrived on Mars. I really felt myself rooting for their cause and there was real character growth across the trio.
  • I liked the scenes of Ephraim training Obsidians to lie and deceive, and ultimately the mutual respect between the cultures.
  • Great action scenes as always.

CONS

  • Too many twists and Big Bads destroyed any plot progression
    • Every time I thought that I finally understood the players and their motivations on the board, a new twist was introduced. This created an exhausting experience.
    • I thought that the Queen of the Syndicate would be an important reveal after some progression, followed by a resolution by the end of this book. It feels like it is going to be Sefi, but it turns out to not be her. That's okay. But then it's Lillath, one of the Boneriders from the original series? This doesn't make much sense and she's a less interesting character, and means that there are basically two characters that Mustang will have to battle in this book to keep the Republic together. Right? Nope. She won't end up dealing with the Obsidians at all, and Lillath is actually working for a child clone of the Jackal...I mean WTF?
    • Did this series really need random super-powered aliens? I laughed when this twist happened.
  • Lysander sections
    • 25% of the word count of a 750 page book devoted to my least favorite character
    • On top of that, he spends all his time with new characters I do not care about: it's all Atalantia, Atlas, Glirastes, Ajax, Kalindora, Rhone, Seriphena, etc.
    • His inner strife from IG is gone. Now he 100% believes that Gold must be united. This is despite numerous examples of how that won't work. There's no nuance to this.
    • He is established as being ill-equipped for this level of combat and war. By the end of the book, however, he is a super spy leading a revolution. He has a new thing called "Mind's Eye" that basically makes him Daredevil, but he never used this while imprisoned in the Rim in IG? When Ajax asks, "How?" after Lysander says how he felled Darrow, I AGREE 100% that is the right question. He never should've made it out of the room with Alexander.
    • I do not believe the people of Mercury would have rallied to arms behind him, and I wish he died at the end of Part I in the desert with the flame to his head and extreme exposure to unlivable temperatures and levels of radiation.
  • No one ever dies
  • Confusing descriptions and scenes
    • Descriptions on both Mercury and Mars confused me at multiple points. Being unfamiliar with the topography and the cities of these planets, I really struggled to understand when we were chasing a beast, diving into a mine, entering a flooded city, or walking 700 miles in the desert. A lot was just really unclear to me and I found myself re-reading sections often to find the 1-2 sentences that painted the whole picture.
    • What was the robotic squid that went into Lyria's brain? I didn't understand this at all.
    • There were like 3-4 examples where a woman was described as mooing which I thought was odd.

Honestly, I'm not sure what I wanted from this book, but I definitely came away disappointed. Sorry for the rant.