This is my second foray into Charlie Jane Anders' work, after trying and failing to read The City in the Middle of the Night, and at least I managed to finish this book, though it was tough going in some spots. I was invested in the first half, which covers the childhoods of the main characters, but it really fell off for me once we got to their adulthoods. 

I think a lot of it has to do with how unfocused the conflict is. In the first half, it mainly comes from our protagonists being outcasts, dealing with abusive or unsupportive families, and facing a dastardly guidance counselor that seeks to tear them apart. In the second, it's just BOOM natural disasters on an apocalyptic scale that weren't really weaved well enough into the story, to the point where a lot of what happens in the first half feels redundant in retrospect. It would have integrated a lot better if there were even just hints in the first section of the coming disasters, so we're not met with this jerky tonal shift on top of everything else going on. I know that catastrophes don't always necessarily come with a forewarning, but we gotta stick with a theme here.

There was a lot of potential here, with the concept of magic/nature vs. science, but the execution never really lived up to the possibilities. The whole society of assassins that Rose, the guidance counselor, belongs to would have been an interesting added faction on top of the magic users and the scientists, but that whole plot thread dissolves entirely once Rose is out of the picture and easily tossed aside in the second half, which is odd considering weren't we told he's apparently the greatest assassin ever? I know his whole deal was to come off as a sort of joke, but it's so difficult to navigate the humor in this book when there's also such serious things happening and we're meant to take them at face value.

So much of this book feels so thin, yet incredibly dense all at once. Every side character feels so wooden that it wouldn't be hard to imagine them as cardboard cutouts. Plot points and characters are quickly introduced and them dumped to the side with no resolution or development. All these issues stack on top of each other until you wonder why you're still reading. 

There were some good lines in this book, moments that really did strike and encourage me to keep going, but ultimately I would describe the experience as terribly uneven. I really wanted to give this author another shot, but perhaps I have to accept the fact that our vibes don't mesh.