I was very intrigued by the cover and the synopsis. I was excited to receive a copy through BookishFirst to get to read and review this book. I had a hard time making it through the first half of the book. I found the story to be slow moving and hard to get through at points but it does pick up in about the last third of the book. It took a little to get used to, but I like a society where people are used to introducing themselves with pronouns immediately after their name. I also liked the queer representation with the gender neutral folks and the main character self-identifying several times as ace (or asexual). I don’t think I’ve read a lot of cyberpunk/sci-fi with representation so that was refreshing for me. The writing wasn’t bad. While at times it could have been tweaked or improved I think it shows a decent foundation and the potential that this author has. The spy intrigues were interesting. The AI entity was difficult for me. I wanted to like him a lot, but I just struggled with taking that leap. I thought character development across the board could have been improved and deepened including Bastion. All together it wasn’t a bad read especially if you like cyberpunk science fiction.