This was a wild ride. A vast majority of this book has unneeded misogynistic and racist overtones. I'm fine with that coming from characters, but when it bleeds so heavily into almost all the narration/mood then it just gets a bit uncomfy. I think a big point of this book was the idea that there will always be decent people and bad people and everyone gravitates towards one or the other. But it was hard to take some of the messaging seriously when everything was infused with women sweating in unnatural places to help their clothing "cling" to various things. Whatever. 

It really took me a long time to read this book for three reasons: it is a 1000+ page book, the first 40% hit a little too close to home at times as the whole thing is about a "cold/flu-like" superbug, and I just spent 1/2 of the first 60% of the book waffling between "am I intrigued?" and "I think this could be promising." It really wasn't until I was 60% of the way in that I was excited to keep reading. Which honestly made the first 600 pages or so a bit of a slog. I think it was solid and in the end, I enjoyed it. So I'm going to give it a 3.5/4 and round it out to 4 stars. I think if the ending had landed more solidly I could have given it a 4.5 that would have rounded up. But honestly, for how intrigued I ended up being it became a bit of a letdown in the last 5%.

I think I may be a bit generous if I give this 4 stars. So I'm going with 3.75... But it isn't all that serious of a thing and I enjoyed a good bit of it despite finding that it Flagged a good bit (pun intended).