Sekaran makes an interesting choice in setting her story - which has plenty of overlap with conversations both past and present about nationalism, immigration, racism, in-groups/out-groups, etc -in a fictional place. In some ways I thought it worked in allowing the invented terminology to be thematically consistent (government drones are called dragonflies, immigrants are moths while those with longer-term roots are butterflies) not to mention tying into Muki's presentation at the end, but it sometimes made things seem almost too simplistic, and the worldbuilding didn't seem to expand quite enough - time period, for example, was somewhat murky and confusing, and the choice to use nut/legume names for certain characters came off as goofy and almost oddly satirical. Overall the managing of the themes themselves, also seen in Salazar's Land of the Cranes, Cisneros's Efrén Divided, and Yang's Front Desk, was capably done, and Muki comes off as a readable, winning narrator. Might be a good companion read with historical fiction such as They Called Us Enemy, Cuba in My Pocket, When the World Was Ours, or I Lived on Butterfly Hill.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC.