Ultimately I was frustrated with this, the world was intriguing, the back and forth between Ven and Georg was excellent and the Pontus reveal was suspenseful, it just took so long to get there! I really struggled with all the descriptions and the philosophical waffle, it just made the book more dense than it needed to be and in doing that there were long sections where I found myself bored as the pace had gone. I was also extremely disappointed with the ending, I wouldn’t read this again but I will try the author again. ( )

A book with premise and setting right up my alley. North's writing is very beautiful, but for me, this book used a lot more words than necessary to deliver what it wanted to say. I feel like this could be a book where you either really love the writing style, or it overshadows the actual story for you.

I was still very interested in the story throughout, but perhaps because of the writing style, I failed o get all that invested into it. ( )

A combination of dystopian novel, espionage thriller, and philosophical explorations of humanity and divinity. I had a hard time getting started with it, but about 50 pages in I was hooked, and the other 400 melted away quickly.

If you like hope and despair in equal measures, this one might be for you. ( )

Loved this book! Read it myself and now reading it with my daughter. Took me back to my first reading of Dune. So many groups of Dune play the long game like the Temple of NftBA, social and geologic engineering to make the world what they view as better.
The relationships of this book are complex and human; they are layered with love, apathy, hate, and fear.
And the religious angle! Is it a religion if the gods are manifest and the priests don't worship them? I don't know, but I liked it.

Probably more of a 3.5.

I think it’s been a long while since I’ve read a proper dystopian novel, so this one took me some time to finish. Not that it wasn’t interesting, but I couldn’t find the pacing engaging enough. But I really did find the themes of climate change as well as the whole idea of future generations trying to piece together details about their ancestors’ technologies very fascinating. There is also a lot of translation, researching and archiving that goes on here and that was cool, because these are some fields which are very underrated despite being important and it’s quite rare that we find characters with these occupations in fiction. The plot was also interesting but what left the most impression on me was the question it leaves in our mind throughout - are we as humanity capable enough to learn from our mistakes, not let capitalist greed drive our decisions, and do something substantial to prevent our planet from further destruction. It’s definitely a very timely novel in this aspect, and I think anyone who enjoys the dystopian/ cli-fi sub genre would surely enjoy this one. ( )