I finished Bonfire of Worlds a while back and have started to read certain passages with more detail, have to give my summary.
First off, this is probably one of the best Dark Age Battletech novels. I'd easily rank it up there with Fortress Republic (#18), Pandora's Gambit (#27), and Surrender your Dreams (#23). Ton of action, just enough politics and scheming that the characters actually appear smart. Lot of jumping around and POV characters but it never seemed forced. I think my favorite parts were with Tucker Harwell and anything in the Lyran corner. The Wolves have some real teeth again, the scenes with Clansmen actually makes them feel like a different society, rather than just a bunch of mech' jocks. Anastasia Kerensky is a good character here too, but she's more balanced than when she last appeared (In Masters of War, I think, there she was a unstoppable force of nature with a wacky agenda).
I liked seeing the Alaric and Verena scenes, very sad when
Anastasia just up and killed Verena for little reason other than to do it.
The way almost all of the major characters intertwined again on Tharkard was nice too, I think Bonfire managed to continue on where the "Republic in Flames" duology left off with givin g us the core of Dark Age cast very well.
One big part did stick out of my mind though when reading the book. The scenes with Tucker Harwell, particularly when he's about to get away from the secret Comstar base on Luyten. Did anyone else feel like Alexi Holt's dialog was very... odd, almost fake? I understand that Tucker Harwell was not (and will never be, unfortunately) in a right state of mind after what Patricia did to him, but these two lines;
"Who wouldn't be a Monster in Service to God?"
and then at the very end of the novel;
"Oh Tucker, why couldn't you just leave it alone?"
Coming from a Knight of the Sphere, unless Tucker isn't hearing things correctly, this sort of language just seems... foreshadowing that something bad has been happening behind the Fortress Republic walls, something that is changing the Republic, or maybe unveiling a new kind of Republic that is much less white-hat than before.