Not far enough in to clock a rating , but some passive observations:

• Prison is my favorite setting; it forces introspective character development, sorrow/punishment/remorse/other masochistic character motivations which I enjoy (project much?)

• Tchaikovsky, and some other authors, do this thing where they betray their lizard brained lack of knowledge about how people interact. Protag sands by silently while another character does something for "30 minutes." Like, no brah, he did not. Especially after saying that there was little status quo between him and the Governor at the telescope. This kind of odd detail with insufficient setup to stage the stoic long-silence breaks the immersion and seems lazy. Not a deal breaker, just a nit I've picked up

Kiestering a gecko to gamble upon (or eat) fucking rocks.

Part "I" ~21% of the way through I give it a solid 7.75. Enjoyable, but nothing compelling quite yet

Part "II" is a good set piece.

The zealous prisoner has the arc/existence in the book so far IMO

Jumbled together my reference points for parts 3,4,5.

I think 3 is a return to prison which is a bit samey, 4 is really good, and then 5 is the Tchaikovsky twist. Something similar happens in the Children of Time.

I do like that he kind of just doesn't give a shit about the reader in terms of the coherence of his story. He tells what he wants to tell and interweaves some plot in. It happens masterfully in this book, and a bit less so in CoT especially in the 2nd book which is just Book 1 done over again, like he didn't get it all out/in the way he wanted in the first book.

As a standalone, this book benefits from the tangents that don't necessarily "fit in" well to the story. Parts 2, 4, and 5 are close to non-sequiturs with like 40% relevance to the main plot of 1,3,5*.

The narration of this audiobook is so good – Marshall, Talon, the beasts voices are all so good.

I also like that he introduces a game-breaking mechanic at the beginning of the story, the reader just has to suspend their disbelief and go with it because it's such a matter of fact, and then it's mostly ignored/used as a power-ranking benchmark for the characters for the rest of the story, rather than abused and played out. Reminds me of Bridger from Terra Ignota.

Overall very enjoyable 8.5

related