Oof.

Executed differently, this would have been one of my favorite books ever. A genre I love (clifi! Survival!) with some great themes (gender! Race! Class! Immersive technology! Man vs nature!) and multiple plotlines that come together? Yes please. All the right ingredients were there for me to read this in a night.

But I didn't read it in a night. It took time and deliberate effort. I wanted to enjoy it and kept compromising with myself - yes, it reads a little YA-y, but I'll try to overlook it. Yes the characters are a bit one-dimentional, but I'll try and overlook that. Yes, the plots are difficult to follow and don't make much sense but... (You get where I'm going in this).

I don't want to be too harsh in my review given how badly I wanted to like this book. But the social issues are tackled with the subtlety of an Instagram infographic, the dialogue and character interactions feel stiff and unrealistic, and I just couldn't "get into it". I was rooting for this book, and ended up just being relieved when I finally finished it.

Instead of this one, I would recommend picking up Parable of the Sower for clifi that tackles similar themes, Good Morning Midnight (by Lily Brooks Dalton) for the "being stranded in the arctic with a small child" vibes, and Sea of Tranquility for the multiple plots that neatly slot together.