It was too long. Plain and simple. But while that's not usually a problem, it was NEEDLESSLY long. There was so much fluff in this book that didn't need to be there, it made it a truly daunting read. It felt as if the author would think of an interesting piece of world building and decide to devote an entire chapter to explaining it rather than asking "Is this really important at this time? Can I incorporate this in another way?"

The story was... fine, but I would have liked it more with half of the chapters cut out. I think the story would have been better suited with a faster pace, but it was so touch and go with the speed that the plot moved. Side note, this was very clearly written by a man. You create THREE post apocalyptic societies and each of them is a different shade of patriarchal. Every woman pines after a man and actively seeks fulfillment through them (even the nun!) The last quarter of the book was honestly just a slog, and the story was not interesting enough for me to pick up the rest of the trilogy. Maybe if it were 400 pages shorter.