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I really wanted to enjoy this book as I thought the overall concept was very interesting, but I constantly found myself frustrated by the writing and characterisation, and the last section of the book drove me positively demented and I found myself speed reading through chunks of it just to get it over with faster.

The author's propensity to give everything Very Silly Proper Names and repeat those names over and over was definitely something I could have done without, and whilst there are some great sections of the book conceptually, I found so much of it was spoiled by either trying to be funny or by the sheer unlikeliness of such a thing coming to pass. On top of this, the book charts a huge tragedy and when it happens, the psychological impacts of the aftermath is just kind of ignored and it's business as normal with too much effort at humour.

An extremely in depth look at the impact of the War on Drugs on black and brown minorities in the USA. Some of the facts laid bare here are absolutely shocking (rates of incarceration for black males vs white males for the same drug crimes especially when looked at in terms of usage percentages vs population size of each group - none of it makes any sense except in baked in racist terms).

The only thing I'll say against the book is many of the points are repeated over and over. It definitely felt like it could have been edited down without losing impact.

It was difficult to not find myself comparing this to The Expanse, given just how much I enjoyed that staggering 9 book series. Sadly I didn't find this lived up to my expectations. I appreciated the imagination that clearly went into it, but I didn't find myself connecting with any of the characters in the same way that I did in The Expanse.

In theory this book starts out with a much much bigger scope than The Expanse but strangely feels much narrower and small. You don't really get the same sense of space or the worlds involved or the technologies.

I'm hopeful that it turns around and proves me very wrong in the subsequent books, and I think if I had read this without ever reading The Expanse I probably wouldn't be so critical. I did enjoy it, just not in the way I'd hoped to.