The writing was a little clunky - between some awkward dialogue, to a few typos that made it past copy editing, to the obsession with giving every person our characters meet a height/weight estimate, to a few problematic word choices (we'll get back to this later) - but what was really well done were the questions this story asked: about consent, about humanity, about rehabilitation, about mind control, about religion, about the line between privacy and security... There was a lot packed into this book.

That being said, it was a touch too long. By the time I got to the end, I was flying through it, but the first 150 pages were pretty slow. I think a lot of extraneous details could have been stripped out, though I did really like seeing how overwhelmed and confused Salvi was as the evidence kept pouring in without a clear suspect. There was an undesirable office romance (undesirable for me, but I can totally understand why it happened), a dark secret that took a very long time to come out, some of the side-character descriptions are not great (ie calling someone Asian instead of being more specific - because not all those of Asian descent look alike or even necessarily similar - even just to say "East-Asian" would have been preferable), there was also one point where a character refers to one of the Subjugates as being retarded (which, while we know the speaker is not a good person, our character just says "yeah" and keeps going - which is not okay; that kind of language needs to be immediately and vehemently opposed).

I think by the time we hit our stride and got to explore the world a bit more, I was hooked on the big existential questions that scifi/spec-fic is so good at bringing up. The plot hinges on this prison complex where violent prisoners can volunteer to be brain-trained into Serenes : nonviolent and supremely religious slaves with little to no affect (their baseline is so stable, they can't handle a crisis, for example). Even though these prisoners volunteer and were not the kind who could ever assimilate back into normal life - is it wrong to literally torture the sadism out of them, to completely rewire their brains? And then there's the surveillance state in the city versus the tech-repellent religious community - changing one shackle (technology) for another (very strict and pious religion).

I honestly am very excited to dive deeper into this world in book two. Thanks to Angry Robot for the complementary copy in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own.