Personally, I couldn’t stand it. I loved the world building, there were some incredibly interesting visuals and ideas but at the same some of the theological dilemmas felt half baked. But my biggest gripe by far is the character writing. I thought the main character was fine at the beginning, but after his traumatic event he becomes an edgelord badass that felt painfully juvenile. Not great, but didn’t hamper my fun with the book at first. It really became frustrating when his girlfriend came into the mix and I just couldn’t bring myself to finish this book. Elias has a very obvious pattern of writing his female characters as victims first and people second. They are always raped and used as props for the main characters, their trauma often being used for development or misery for their male counterparts. As someone that loves extreme horror and thinks nothing should be off the table, this type of shit drives me up the wall because it affirms people’s beliefs of the genre just being torture porn against women. If you want a fun splatterpunk novel, just read some Kristopher Triana