I wanted to like this book so much more than I did and it comes down to...3 things, I think.
1) The worldbuilding was way more interesting than the characters holding it. Teh whole corporate belief structure thing was fascinating and felt like there was so much there to dig into, but it's mostly just background to set up the plot and that annoys me.
2) I just had very little invested in the main characters. (The Incomparable review that touches on their nature as beings that prey on humans made a point, but I'm not sure that's it.) They also kind of felt like plot vehicles, maybe?
3) Right on the heels of of my "contemporary romance trope of seeing love as the reward for finding yourself, not the method by which one does" comment, this book

plays straight into the trope of romance as the thing that saves and, like, Talabi does kind of lampshade it, but it's still jarring.

. Shigidi and Nneoma's relationship frustrated me, and reminded me of a conversation about a completely different author that the men fall fast because the women have so much more to lose. And Nneoma's resistance is written more as a trauma response rather than something that feels like a real and reasonable evaluation of her situation.

I don't know, this one took forever and I ended up switching to audiobook because I kept looking for excuses to read other things. But I appreciated so much of what was in there; it's just that everything I liked was kind of in the background. Can we talk about the belief and mythology thing?