I was initially going to give this 3 stars but the more I thought about it the more dissatisfied I found myself. This book was just shallow in all the ways. The characters and their development was barely there. Some of them did some wild shit at the end that made 0 sense. There ain't no way he getting way with having taken a firefighter axe to the door to get into a restricted area.

The plot didn't know what it wanted to be about. The characters and life as an instance? immigration? technology moving too fast? the what-ifs of life? It touched on all of it, and yet nothing at all came from it.

Nothing at all was happening till like the 50% mark. The pacing of this was atrocious. I was deeply bored for most of it and almost dnf'd a few times, but the concept was interesting. However, the more they tried to explain the more I didn't buy it. Why was controlling instancing barely talked about? This has been life for this world, you are really gonna tell me, no one has thought of a way to keep it in check as much as possible? But apparently this was only, again, barely talked about once the tech came out, not before.

This should have stayed as a short story. Just keep it mysterious.

I was in the mood for a cozy fantasy as a palate cleanser but I'm not a fan of what's going to be the love interest even if it's supposed to be low romance.

I AM DEVASTATED.

Now that the emotions have calmed down a bit... One thing I do appreciate about these books is how to the point they are. They have a quest, the think up of most efficient way to do it, and then immediately do it. None of this waffling about or conveniently forgetting shit that drags out a book for the page count.

However, I'll be stopping here for the foreseeable future. While I don't think it was a bad ending, I actually think it was kind of fitting, I was still hoping for something else and I had to go look for some spoilers and now idk how to feel about those spoilers so it's break time for this saga, for now.