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OK, so, on surprises this is low. Another one of the »everybody knew the protagonist was trans, except for the protagonist« story. But that is what we are here for.

The world building was fun. I liked the wedding ceremony at the end.

If you want to put an antenna mast on the skyscraper that has a helipad on top in this world, that is fine. But please, not both! Landing on a helipad, where you don’t have a proper view of the ground all around is hard enough. Going in through a maze of antenna masts? No. No, no, no no! Much too dangerous!

Ok, two things. They don’t seem to do proper debriefings after the encounters. There Claire could have mentioned the ceiling she hit, what is later called the wall (the Wall?).

Also, Nova has now thrown her cymbals twice. I don’t think she mentioned the second time to the armorer. This sounds like a dramatic complication in the next fight, were they probably will shatter.

But that is what the armorer is for. Long-term durability isn’t really a thing with modern weaponry. If you can win a fight in a way that weakens your weapon you do it. But then you mention it in the debriefing, so that something can be done about it.

(I just recently heard about US Navy pilots more or less deliberately ruining the engines on their planes: by saving fuel they put a lot of wear on the engines. But the choice was saving the pilot and the airframe, or losing it – together with the pilot and a pristine engine.)

I ges one difference between consciousness transfer and wonderland is that it is obvious that there is no wonderland.

I ges i am getting more and more curmudgeony as i grow older.

There are some common story elements that i think are just impossible (some obviously so, others not so much) * faster than light travel * time travel * magic and divine intervention * »body swapping«

That does not mean that people shouldn’t use them in fiction. But for me there ar two conditions: The trope is used just for convenience. The classic is Star Trek: Yu want a clean slate for each episode, so the cast is at a new planet each week. Somehow. Dto. the transporter. Yu just save episode time and cost of a shuttle prop. Or if it is important for the plot it still must not be the plot. Take body swapping stories. There the plot generally not »what if we could separate ›consciousness‹ and memory from a brain and put it in another brain«. The plot is generally »what if people were treated the way they treat other people«.

So. Finally, Qoheleth. Here the main plot seems to be »what if, if you had a hiper-immersive computer interface, that would mean that your ›consciousness‹ and your memories could somehow not just be copied, but would somehow be moved out of your body«. In my eyes it is not a priori completely impossible to make some sort of copy of a »person«, but i don’t see how »consciousness« can be anything other than some brain function. I don’t see how that brain function could be moved out of a brain and then be a function of something that is not a brain. Especially not by accident.

As such, i reject the basic premise of this book. No star rating. The situation is too odd for that.