It took me a long time to get around to reading this book, but I’m glad I did! The changes to how the Colony worked and Anthony’s interactions with his siblings changed significantly at the end of Book Three, and honestly I found it quite hard to connect with any of the Twenty or the rest of the Formica Sapiens. They didn’t act very ant-like in the battle with Garralosh, and I worried we were in for a discount Human civilization rather than an ant colony. As anyone who got this far can attest, we’re here for Anthony and ants, not a bog-standard fantasy setting.
However, these fears have proven baseless! While the interactions with the Colony are superficially far more complex and varied, the underlying ant-vibe is still going strong. These art intelligent ants, not people in ant bodies, and RinoZ does a wonderful job of conveying that. The dynamic is interesting, and we aren’t encouraged to develop emotional attachments to any of the ants in particular, just the faceless “colony” and “siblings” as before, a far more reasonable ask.
As Anthony has reached Tier 5, levels, mutations, and evolutions are coming far more slowly, so the focus of this book is much more on the development of the colony and the expansion of the worldbuilding. We learn more about the Lizard Wizard, Reincarnators, the civilizations that live within the Dungeon, and the Ancients. And it’s all very interesting.
In many ways this book feels like groundwork. Anthony has far to go before he can evolve again, and the Colony must become ready for the long-foreshadowed conflict with the Legion. Very little of pivotal plot importance occurs, but everything we learn and experience here will be critical building blocks for what’s to come. And it’s not like we’ll be bored. We have Anthony!
Overall, I highly recommend.