I really wanted to like this more than I ended up liking it. The positive thing about a lot of the faults in this book is they are easy to pinpoint. As such, I really hope Ellis can note where this book is a letdown and really improve how she handles/writes the next book in this series (which I do plan on reading).

While Ellis's attention to detail is refreshing and helpful for her video essays... some of her detail really drags this book down. The first 15% of the book was spent really ensuring you knew the setting of the book was 2007. But then it had odd details that were dropped like the reader should be familiar with them (like company names, events, etc) and I had to stop and look it up to find out that some of the things she was bringing up with no clear explanation on why or what they were... were just made up. So the world-building was definitely "let's just drop you in the world" but it made for a very confusing and fast-paced beginning. This was my biggest issue, just the huge use of made-up things without full explanations. I think she was trying to avoid any info dumps... but for the first time ever I was wishing at some points she had. 

The first 15% of the book was my biggest problem, which led to a little bit of a pacing problem for me. The last bit of the book was very much a slow and introspective story. Which I liked. But it felt a little jarring after the first bit of the book. I wish she had leaned more into just keeping the whole thing slow. 

I also wish overall she had done a better job at thinking through her descriptions. I am still unsure what the aliens are supposed to look like. Despite a good portion of each chapter being dedicated to descriptions. Outside of alien descriptions, it also felt like she was often just trying her best to not use typical descriptions of things (like pain, cuts, being tired). This made some descriptions really interesting. But it left a lot of them being confusing and really losing the point of describing things, as it just made it more unclear sometimes what was happening. 

Overall, I think this was founded on some really interesting things. She had a clear vision of what was happening, who and what the aliens were and their culture, and a very interesting perspective and love note to the idea of what might be out there in our universe. I really enjoyed the read once I got over the beginning 15% of the book. I just hope she can reflect and move forward in the series with some much-needed changes to her approach. But overall it was fun, quick to read, and I enjoyed myself. Much is always the point of reading for me. 

This was a 3 star for the writing style, but a 5 for the ideas and plot she was grappling with. 3.5 overall due to a few other factors dragging it down.