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I really quite enjoyed the texture of the world building of the underhive and how grounded it was in a world of survival and desperation, a cityscape gone completely wild, not overrun by nature so much as man's own savage nature.

I enjoyed the majority of the characters as well, save sadly for Tempes Sol, who seems to be the primary protagonist of the story. I found his character to be almost entirely one-note for the vast majority of the book right up until the end, where I felt it was dropped on the reader as a surprise that "oh look, he actually did develop, he's just kept it secret really hard." What sours me about that is that I liked the direction his character went there, I just wish we got to enjoy the process of it more and that version of his character.

For everything else, i.e. the other characters, the environs, and the interaction between, I enjoyed it all thoroughly.

NB: this is of the Audible audiobook version narrated by Steven Pacey, Jonathan Keeble, Katy Maw, and Toby Longworth.

While I would have expected more character development or depth for a novel focused on Valdor himself, I found this a better book for delving into the origins of the Imperium. Definitely interesting in how it built out some of the early stories, though I feel like the writing painfully bent into knots to not say too much and to ensure that just enough was left to the imagination.

That criticism aside, I must say that I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. In particular, as this was an audiobook version, I was delighted that each section that was to be a recording was voice-acted as a scene. Interestingly I felt like the character of the dialogue in these sections cast more interesting light on the involved characters than the rest of the novel.