The characters are boring and unlikable, any cool characteristics of theirs are smothered under chapters upon chapters of useless rambling on about half baked concepts. I understand that they are exploring complex topics in their research but I feel like it takes pages and pages for the characters to even slightly hint to the reader what they are actually studying. I'm literally in academia now as a researcher at a large research university (one of the most pretentious fields to be in I know we are annoying as shit) and I still find this book too pretentious.

Also as far as I can tell from my reading Ezra is being set up to be the villian which is valid he is kinda a dickhead but his cause is sharing the largest weath of information known to man with the general public and maybe its just the educator in me but why the fuck wouldn't you want as much knowledge as possible to be accessible to as may people as possible. I understand that like blah blah blah magic dangerous than real life knowledge but there's books out there on how too build bombs. I also looked up some spoliers to see if I wanted to keep reading and it seems that Blake sets up two sides of this argument and youre supposed to pick one and its not a true 'villian' type story but also why are you setting up the knowledge for everyone side in such a way that suggests they are the villains.

Long story short I'm a hater. ALSO there's such a weird sexual tension to every interaction but its the frustrating type not the fun type. I don't know how to articulate the tension and why its weird but know its there.