It certainly was a book.

I knew it was a novella going into it, but I guess I was still expecting to find a little more meat on the bones than I did? This story felt very "safe" and on-rails: we have the call to adventure, the near-death experience that seems hopeless until the deus ex machina that introduces a new character, a heroic self-sacrifice and ultimately culminating in a open ending where it's not explicitly described but you know exactly what happens. It's not inherently a bad thing to have a formulaic story (there are only so many ways to construct a plot after all), but it was a little distracting to me just how aware I was of the tropes and the pacing while I was reading it. Maybe this was actually a YA book and I just didn't realize it until after I finished.

There's just not a lot here, at least not to me. I'm probably going to forget much of this book.