This is terribly written in the way of a bad academic paper: needlessly wordy, repetitive, and taking in circles.

Here's a (HIGHLY ABRIDGED) example, where the author spends pages trying to explain that he is using personification, something which he has already spent many sentences emphasizing.

"You have been invited to think of the two systems as agents within the mind, with their individual personalities, abilities, and limitations. ... The use of such language is considered a sin in the professional circles in which I travel, because it seems to explain the thoughts and actions of a person by the thoughts and actions of little people inside the person’s head. ... My answer is that the brief active sentence that attributes calculation to System 2 is intended as a description, not an explanation. It is meaningful only because of what you already know about System 2. ... System 1 and System 2 are so central to the story I tell in this book that I must make it absolutely clear that they are fictitious characters. Systems 1 and 2 are not systems in the standard sense of entities with interacting aspects or parts."

And... ahem... why should I care about any of these characters?

DNF at 19%

Man I love this book so much. It's so well constructed, so beautiful.

I LOVED THIS BOOK! I loved the first one, and this was even better.

The biggest change, structurally, between this and the first book was that this one had a clear goal. You knew where the plot was going and what the characters were trying to do. The plot engine is more focused and tight.

What I really love in this is the journalling narration. It's so much from Emily's perspective that it provides room for reading between the lines. Emily is not the best at emotional introspection, so the reader gets to do it. I loved the game of reading between the lines, seeing what Emily missed and what she doesn't want to admit to herself.

If you liked the first book, I think you'll love this one. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley and Del Rey for a copy of this book to review. All opinions are my own.

I've been trying to figure out to review this book. I liked the characters and the writing style. The worldbuilding is fun and well laid out. But I seriously struggled to care about the plot of this book. At every turn, I was uninvested.

Tho technically this is marketed as a book 1, it did feel like it was relying on the "prequel" first book too much for it to be a good entry point to the series. I would recommend going back to read "book 0" first. The biggest thing I felt like I was missing here was reasons to care about the character relationships and pasts.

Thanks to Netgalley and Starwatch Press for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

The worldbuilding is exquisite, inventive, and refreshing. The plot is repetitive, slow, and lacking personal stakes.

It's short

THIS BOOK IS HARD TO PITCH, FOR SEVERAL REASONS:

1) It defies genre boundaries. It's fantasy/scifi/post-apocalyptic/noir/cyberpunk. It will bounce from tarot reading to nuclear war to voodoo goddess to bioengineering and back again.

2) The plot is not straightforward enough to easily synopsize.

3) Part of the fun of this novel is figuring out what's going on. The book does not easily give you the premise or the plot; you get to work for it.

I CAN SAY THIS:

4) This book follows Sparrow, who sells black market VHS tapes in a post-apocalyptic city. The horsemen who brought the apocalypse are coming again, and Sparrow gets caught up in it.

5) This book has powerful themes of identity and bodily autonomy.

6) When I first read this book (at age 15), it was a little too strange and heavy for me. I didn't fully appreciate it then, tho I did enjoy it. Some of the marketing for this book says it's YA, but I would never put it there. Our main character is a teenager, but the themes/content-warnings/worldbuilding/out-of-this-world-Weirdness put the book firmly in the Adult category.

Now, I completely loved it. It's even better on a reread.