Well, I finally have time and got over here. Let's start by saying that, while there are certainly issues, I'm pretty sure that overall I liked Nexus okay. Feel free to rant, and I'll likely agree with you, but overall impression was positive.
Thoughts:
1) Yeah, one of my biggest issues was, as someone else mentioned, that Kelsie swarm-killed someone with basically no response or pay-off at the end. I mean, it was about the most pointless thing ever. Why was that even there??? Chizara's murder at least had a point/plot relevance...
2) I gotta admit, the authors constructed the whole three books worth of Ethan in such a way that my response to him literally tripping and falling on the big red button of doom was basically "Yep, I believe that." So, kudos, you properly built up what a complete mess of a human being that kid is.
3) Was the worldbuilding/lore incredibly sparse? Yes. Was it outright contradictory and/or nonsensical when we DID get any info? Yes. Do I much care? Not really, apart from Chizara being so very weird compared to literally EVERYTHING else. So, everyone can decide for themselves how to feel about it, but I guess I just put up with a lot. (It helps that I basically think of everything from Nate and Piper as "Here's what they think, but honestly they're just guessing so don't take it too seriously"). With that somewhat dismissed, I can just about accept that everything is how it is just because.
4) I should confess that the names for everyone in my head tend to default to Nate, Flicker, Anon, Kelsie, Chizara, and Scam unless I'm intentionally using their codenames or actual names. This happen to anyone else?
5) Nate pretty much never got over his creeper tendencies, did he? Not that I'm complaining much, but I was kinda hoping he could try and get better about that.
6) I was unduly distracted for about half of Nexus by Piper's name. Anyone who's read Heroes of Olympus understands my trouble.
7) Count me in on being disappointed that the Ethan and Thibault friendship was more or less shoved aside after Zeroes. They were pretty fun together and actually got along, unlike lots of the other pairs of zeroes.
Petty note, but according to my count on first read, of the 4 f-bombs in the book, Flicker got to say 3 of them. This greatly amused me.
And 9) was I the only one who really wanted Ethan's sister (Jess?) to come back? Cause I really liked what we saw of her before. Any of the other family members of the main squad would have been nice too, they need more page-time.
