It took me 5 months to get through this and I don't regret it, but it was at times difficult to find the resolve to continue. It has a ton of internal dialogue, is very slow, and not much reward comes through in the ways you usually expect from stories like this. 

I don't like to tell people who don't enjoy the same books as me that they "just didn't get it" or some variation of that. I don't like insinuating that there is some deeper subtext that they've missed somewhere along the way, so don't misunderstand me as pompous when I say this but-- there is a perspective here that not everyone can readily see the additional depth of. There is an incredible (I cannot stress that enough) INCREDIBLE nuance depicted from an Indigenous lens that I think others will have a far more difficult time contextualizing the story around. For a lot of us as Indigenous people, dystopia has already happened, we live in a world where our societies were uprooted and gutted in every way imaginable. Non-indigenous people can read through these worlds with a sort of catharsis like thank god ours isn't like that, or maybe you see the similarities show through and find it disconcerting that maybe we could become that etc. But, that's happened already (and still is). To us though, not to you. And that heavily changes the way the story reads in my opinion. Especially Book II-- oh my GOD. The chapters of coming into your own when you're growing up as an Indigenous person were strikingly accurate. The confusion, the radicalization-- the way it succumbs you (sometimes misguided, sometimes not), the shifting dynamics within queerness, where the decolonizing line is drawn/ if it is drawn at all, blood quantum with relation to overcompensation/complacency, what community and culture must you relinquish in order to make it in the society imposed onto you. I see so many people disengaged with Book II and while admittedly dense, it is so deeply personal. I am still amazed at how Hanya captured that complexity.

But of course maybe regardless of identity you still just didn't like it lol, and that's fair. I loved it, in a far different way than other similar stories and other Hanya work. Each was satisfying to complete, but not necessarily satisfying endings. I am okay with not having all the answers. I actually think it helps the collective story rather than hinder it if her focus was the interconnections of each book not each it’s own standalone. I enjoyed the ride as well and that counts for a lot to me. I would genuinely love to read this ABSOLUTE UNIT OF A BOOK again (specifically annotate it) in the future knowing what I know now.