There's so much to love about this book. We get a realistic fat main character (who isn't absolutely obsessed with being "in spite of"), we get really awesome technology that doesn't work perfectly (because it's so old and no one knows how to use it properly), we get linguistic evolution (honestly, I totally nerded out about how COOL it was to see even the barest attempt at evolved language that was entirely consistent throughout the text).
That being said, it was still YA, so it was very much built on the same structure as most YA fantasy (but this one has technology instead of magic): chosen one, awkward/insecure main character, snarky and (mostly) supremely capable male love interest who knows a lot more than he lets on, the evil king / court... But as the book went on, it started to surprise me more and more with clever little twists on the familiar YA tropes.
That being said, it was still YA, so it was very much built on the same structure as most YA fantasy (but this one has technology instead of magic): chosen one, awkward/insecure main character, snarky and (mostly) supremely capable male love interest who knows a lot more than he lets on, the evil king / court... But as the book went on, it started to surprise me more and more with clever little twists on the familiar YA tropes.