Bear with me, it's a five star which means that it might be difficult for me to express my thoughts. So.

The world ended 2 years ago due to a Christian eco-terrorist cult unleashing a deadly, monstrous virus on the world. Most people have died, but not all, as had been their goal. In order to fix that, (kill more people), they have been trying to create Seraph, a bio-weapon to wield against the survivors. Unfortunately, Benji, a trans boy, is the one carrying the successful strain of it and he does not want to a part of it at all, which is made clear by him escaping into the city of Acheson, where he is taken in by the ALC, where he badly want to belong. All he has to do to accomplish that is control Seraph and get revenge on the people who hurt him and killed his father. Easy! Not.

Okay, awkward attempt at a blurb over.

The writing is wonderful. Here's a quote(non-spoiler):

"I tried to feel it. I did, I swear. I reached for it, squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could and begged for it. I pretended I was stretching mu hands out into the darkness behind my eyelids, fingers splayed wide, trying to find even the barest touch of something out there in the abyss. To feel the warmth Mom always assured me was waiting once I accepted God into my heart.
There was nothing. Always nothing."

Speaking of God. This book is very, very heavy with Christianity and the damage it can do. As sapphic woman who has been exposed to a similar kind of rhetoric, to people spitting Bible verses in your face as an excuse for telling you that you were "unnatural" and "going to hell", a lot of it resonated with me in a dull-clang-in-your-chest-and-suddenly-you're-about-to-cry kind of way.

The plot progression is a combination of slow and fast paced -- lots of minor events happening constantly and slow progression of the main development. I don't know if that made sense, but that is the best kind of pace.

We mostly follow Benji's point of view with the occasional (declared) switch to Nick or another character's (I'd say out of 36 chapters only 3 or 4 are not from Benji), which was pretty cool.

The characters. Lots and lots of representation. This is the first book I've ever read where neo-pronouns are used freely, which is great! Everyone deserves to see themselves in the books they read. Nick's autism is well written. The characters all feel very real, by which I mean not every "good" person was likeable and not every "bad" person was irredeemably terrible.

The world was developed well enough for us to focus on the plot and character development. We mostly stay in the now and how things are now, post-apocalypse, but we get little glimpses of what might have led up to this genocide happening through little excerpts from speeches and articles at the beginning of every chapter (also a lot of Bible verses) and Benji's recallings of what it was like before. The Flood is described in enough detail for us to understand what Benji was going through.

Love certainly plays a part in this story but I wouldn't say that it was the focus. There is a toxic relationship involved within the plot, which I feel was well done. Also, the themes of morality, grief and recovery are brilliantly explored here.

Like the author says in the note at the start of the book (that's actually when I knew I'd definitely greatly enjoy the book, actually) this is a story of survival. It's not doom and gloom, despite being post-apocalyptic. It's hopeful.

Overall, read it. Especially if you enjoyed Wilder Girls and/or Gideon The Ninth. Also, I did warn y'all about incomprehensibility but even so, I hope I made sense. Please be aware that Benji does get misgendered and deadnamed on paper and there's a lot of gore (from The Flood) and pandemic terminology used throughout the book.