It took me a while to get into this book, having struggled a bit generally to find the time and mindspace to read, but at some point, I read the bulk of it within 2 days. 

It's a great, immersive world with subtle, strange magic and lots of intriguing characters. I do have a lot more questions now that I finished the first book, which I hope will be answered in the second and third book. 

An excellent summary of pertinent recent scientific findings on the effectiveness of HRT on women's <i>everything</i>. And if you prefer to look up the primary sources, the citation list is incredibly extensive. 

This book confirms so much of what I've been suspecting, and what had me running with symptoms of brain fog, cyclical depression, joint pain and occasional insomnia to gynecologists, neurologists, psychologists, orthopedists and general practitioners for years, none of whom took me seriously when I suggested to them it might be hormones. It is fucking hormones. HRT would fucking help. But I have yet to convince one of these numerous doctors to actually give it to me. Wish me luck. 

This novel is set in a post-Ragnarök viking society, which has lost none of the fierceness of what one would expect of vikings. The premise and the worldbuilding are really awesome, and the novel has a bunch of interesting characters that go through quite a development. 

Despite all this, I found the book difficult to read. The writing style is not really my style, and tries too hard to emulate Old Norse and Old English poetry and <i>kenningar</i> at the expense of comprehension. Regardless, now that I'm invested, I'll have to read the next two books...

I didn't read all the short stories, just the ones that interested me. Some of these give nice closure to the main book series, or add background information that seemed to be missing. For that, it's a pretty nice collection, but IMHO you can read the series without reading this as well.

This is the final book in the Unwind Dystology , so I'll talk about all 4 books here (not including the short story collection).

It's an incredibly weird experience to read these books. The whole concept of Unwinding (basically murdering teenagers to use as organ donors) is so disturbing and outlandish, but what makes it more tangible is the fact that especially in books 3 and 4, the author provides a lot of real world excerpts that show real world parallel, or rather, I assume the things where he got his ideas from. And some of those real world quotes are possibly even more disturbing than what's happening in the books.

Altogether, the books tell the story of a bunch of characters, most notably Connor, Risa and Lev, who are significant in all of them, and tie all the plots together. Throughout the books we also encounter a whole lot of other characters around them. Altogether, this makes the books really captivating to read, especially since the POV is switched up every now and then. Some are less fun to read (wow I hate Starkey so much), but altogether it's very well-written.

Character development is excellent, and some of these characters are literally unrecognizable by the end and after all they've been through. 

The books also put a lot of very philosophical questions into the open, and gives you a lot of food for thought on life, death and identity. 

I like to read books that trigger emotional responses and that make me think, and these books are definitely some that I'll be thinking about for a long, long time.

The hunt is on. On to the conclusion in book 4...

Once you've reached this book, you're in deep. This was very compelling, I couldn't put the book down. My only criticism are some of the characters (

Starkey, Dylan

), because they seem a bit one-dimensional and I couldn't really understand their motivations.

WHAT THE FUCK is what I've been thinking the entire time I was reading this book. This world is extremely bizarre and weird. I would even consider it body horror. Even though the book is not very graphic about it, just the thought of what's happening is making me incredibly uncomfortable.

It was a very captivating read, but also a very uncomfortable one. 

One of my issues with the setting is that I find it really hard to believe that parents would willingly have their teenage kids sent off to be harvested. But then again, in such an overpopulated world, I guess people are more inclined to do such horrible things.

Cool premise, but ultimately a bit too much of a kids / middle school plot for me. It wasn't really engaging as the plot was really predictable, and I struggled a lot to finish it. Probably won't read the sequels.

It just didn't grab my attention. Too many uninteresting characters that never seem to come together.