Finished it up. Solon was a wise man, but perhaps a bit of a cynic.
The decision to weave decent amounts of the second book - and larger amounts of the third book - into this season was actually quite clever. In fact, one of the oddities (I won't say "difficulties", that's not right) of the third book was stepping backwards in the timeline and restarting the story from contemporary times on a different thread with new characters. The solution that D&D found was to launch all the threads at the same time with the same characters. So simple even a caveman could think of it. For a book, maybe not the best decision. But for TV, it works.
When the whole thing was first announced, there were a lot of people asking the question of whether D&D intended to adapt the second and third books. Watching the series, the answer is OBVIOUSLY YES. All they need is a green light from Netflix, and seeing the results of 3BP, they're going to get it. I'm waiting eagerly.