In a word: clunky.

I have a fairly high tolerance for purple prose but this reads like it was fed through a thesaurus. And the way characters’ pronouns were shoehorned into narration felt very odd; I’ve seen other reviewers compare it to a HUD. I’m not a fan. On a similar note, at one point a character asks “Show, not tell. Do you imagine that the two are really so different?” Yes I do. Telling instead of showing fosters detachment and makes it hard for me to invest in the characters and the story, plus it makes me feel a little spoken down to, like I’m not trusted to pick up on context clues or interpret the text myself.

The writing in general feels unconfident – there were three or four instances of the narrator pondering where to begin before actually beginning, which was just irritating and not a good start to the novel. I gave up at the first interlude.

I’d plough on if it were shorter. I like the sound of some of the concepts this novel plays with so I may give it another go at some point, but for now it’s a DNF because I’m just not in the mood to work my way through this right now.