This is an incredible, beautiful memoir. In particular, the analogy about gender being a landscape will stick with me for a long time. But the entire novel was really interesting and I absolutely couldn’t put it down until I had finished it.

A kind of bizarre book for several reasons. The first being that I switched from audio to the ebook about 80% of the way through because I was really digging the mystery and wanted to continue listening but I didn’t have any more things to do while listening. I’ve done this several times before. So I began reading the book to find that the prose as it was written didn’t work for me at all. It felt overdramatic and soap opera-y. Narrators had managed to play off the text so well, I barely noticed while listening to the book. Reading the book, however, was an eye-rolling chore.

I’m not sure how much of my following opinions would have been different had I listened to the book instead of reading the last 20%. But essentially, the mystery comes down to this: people died because decisions were made that make no sense at all. This goes far beyond people losing their heads in panic. It just doesn’t make sense.

This entire series is so bizarre. Hazard makes a number of choices that are just odd - neutral odd, “not for me” odd, bad odd and everything in between. That being said, I liked this book better than the one before. It’s less politically dense and easier to follow.

AN ABSOLUTE DELIGHT. I feel a bit bizarre saying that about a book whose every sentence concerns death in some way, but still. I laughed so hard while reading this. It was amazing.

ALRIGHT FINE I guess I’ll read Richard’s book too.