I liked a lot of the themes worked into this. The narrative jumps, though sometimes uneven, facilitated a lot of satisfying correlations between past and present. The nature of stories and what they can, potentially, do. Who has agency and why. While the idea that you are required to violate aspects of your identity to participate in the rat race is not new but does feel like one of the keenest things this works to convey.

For the most part, this did meet my expectations. It did not exceed them though, for several reasons.

The narration was not great, possessing a cadence I did not like. I am not positive whether this is a byproduct of the prose or the delivery or a sort of perfect storm on that front. I didn't quite care about any of the characters and was more interested in the meta-story, which was what became the only satisfying part of the book for me because the granular plot beats, for the most part, felt overwritten. I did not consider the time investment to be significantly returned but was still a worthwhile story to consume, overall.

It might not have benefited from coming after some phenomenal reads as well. I would consider re-reading it sometime with a physical product because I really do think a lot of the annoyance of this came from the narration. And it may simply be stylistically more geared toward not being read aloud as well. Who knows.