Well realized and definitely like the prose quality, it was just very hard to connect with any character and even the world because of the framing. Even when you’re let into a character’s inner thoughts and feelings I still felt like a spectator watching these cold machines playing at being some variant of humanity.

The themes work well and the world building seems solid. I will still read the sequel, I just am more interested from a meta perspective than in the people in it. It was pretty hyped up to me though, so might have just been mismatched expectations on my part. Either way, I still like what I like about it.