it's so hard for me to even formulate thoughts about this. it was truly the longest fucking day. this book took me almost eleven months to read.

some good things: the time atrocities were creative and i like those, the aliens were a clever design and actually well handled. the setting was interesting and underexplored. i love the bleakness of it. the atmosphere. the searing sun that never sets, the prolonged performative violence, the stretch and scrape of the narrative through that fucked up planet's time sectors. sam's characterization was interesting. it's so rare we see a companion who is from the start of the adventure utterly done and utterly exhausted. the overexposure every aspect of this story adds to puts a really great spin on her whole plotline. i'm feasting on all the good sam characterisation in here. the ending is nice. i love that gutting dissatisfaction especially after so much bleak, slogging shit and i mean that entirely genuinely. it's delicious.

some bad things: the doctor's half of it was a little weak, and i felt collier had a bit of a shaky grasp on 8's voice that made some of his bits read as generic. the politics of this book are irritating, because the setup laid the basis to make a strong point. "but the radical leaders of resistance are just as bad as the oppressors" is a really tired, weak-spined story to write even if it fits your little grimdark 'no one is a good person' theme.

i liked it more than i didn't like it for sure, but it wasn't nearly one of the best i've read.