I've finished (stop reading if you don't want Book 3 spoilers!). Ok, maybe I'm reaching, but... did Tim inadvertently pick a book that extols the virtues of centrism? Is Book III what happens when extremes run amok? It's a dystopia where the government has used pandemics as an opportunity to take control of every element of people's lives, where people's basic needs are taken care of but goods are rationed and luxuries unknown, and where climate change has destroyed society, gay marriage has been forbidden, the government lies to claim that foreign countries are responsible for pandemics, etc. It really does seem like the worst excesses of both the left and the right come to life!

I'm also fascinated by her ability to make Charles both hero and villain. Intellectually, we understand that he's the villain; he did a lot to orchestrate this hellscape they're living in. But I also sympathized with him throughout Book III, and felt particularly touched by his love for Charlie and how hard he worked to take care of her. His son was right about him, but somehow I still saw him as the protagonist. And while he couldn't save the country from what he had wrought, he did try to save Charlie and her husband. It's not enough for redemption, but he tried.

I kept thinking about how much we take for granted in our real world. There's a passage about information -- "People in a young dystopia crave information," but that craving fades away and people surrender to the understanding that they will only know what the state wants them to know. In another passage, Charles writes about the "pretty fiction" that friends are as important as family, how friends became a luxury, easily discarded in order to protect your family in a pandemic. Things that we have -- access to information, friendship, stocked grocery stores, a livable climate (in the US), gay marriage, freedom to choose our career, freedom from being punished for our family's sins, etc., -- are just assumed in our world but we need to protect them in order to have the things she defines as paradise -- love, freedom, safety, dignity.