Oh, what a delightful read.

There is no shortage of compliments I could levy upon this novella. It is brisk without being breakneck, and descriptive without overwhelming with text. The characters are vivid and so painfully human it hurts to see them thrust in such an universe. And the worldbuilding, my how much more I wish I could read of this.

The prose is magnificent. Without repeating myself, despite its economical nature, every word is imbued with meaning and personality. There is a real voice behind every paragraph of narration, and a clear vision built by every line of dialogue. This is on top of the creative choices of meshing together the fantastic with the scientific, having a deaf character sign his every line and making it perfectly relevant to the narration, and presenting mutants as an ambiguous consequence of humanity's hubris or cosmic happenstance.

There are, however, criticisms, which I feel stem mostly from a necessity to rush the story. The beginning is rather unclear; it feels like there was a fair amount of meandering there, either to try to find some footing within the world, or set up a world far greater than what we glimpsed. The middle then begins to sag, Lily and Gabriel possessed with an almost aimless (though certainly aimful) wanderlust. And the ending guillotines the plot, crumbling from the heavens.

And alas, we come to Lily. I love her. I love her relationship with the Kami, and her brother, and the Twins, and her overall attitude towards a quest far bigger than her. She lacks, however, a fundamental of any good character: she does not have an arc. I have tried thinking it over in the break between my two reading spells, and for the life of me I could not think of a flaw she exhibited; now at the end, I cannot think of any change she's undergone, or any lesson she's learnt. From start to finish, she has braved the plot with equanimous drive, and though she had to make some tough choices, they came at little cost to her. Losing her kami proved pointless. Her life was never in danger. She had nowhere to grow from, nothing to grow to. In a sense, the story wasn't something she lived through, so much as something that happened to her. And it saddens me to say all of this.

Because, by and large, the worldbuilding was sublime. There was nothing, virtually nothing, that didn't arouse my interest, joy or awe. Everything felt so meticulously thought out, and if there was anything winged in there, I couldn't spot it. From the ruinous cities, to the timeline of events, to the miscellaneous abilities, quirks and whims of the kami, to the hints at something greater than thou, every piece fell into place beautifully. I wish I had more time in this place. I wish I could see this world crumble to dust and blow away.

Alas, it has survived me... for now. And made me wish to see its demise.

Good going, dear. May I read you again.