Great Premise Hampered by Distant Prose

I absolutely loved the concept of this novel, and I enjoyed the breakneck pace... at first. I think this is a book with a lot of strengths, but it's hampered by very simplistic and cold prose. There's a distinct lack of emotion in the writing. Readers are told very shortly what characters feel, with no effort put into making them feel along with those characters. Terrifying and horrific things are recounted with curtness and brevity, wringing any real feeling from them. I struggled to connect with the characters because of this, and there were quite a few questions I still had at the end. To me, this read like a science fiction novel written for people who don't read science fiction. There's a lot of cool, futuristic tech and biological advancements put forward here, but I never understood how they worked, or even really what they did. I did enjoy reading this novel to an extent, but I think I spent most of my reading time frustrated by how much better such an intriguing story could have been written. The murder mystery aspect was interesting, but again it suffered from a lack of characterization and depth. By the ending of the book, I was just glad to have answers, however incomplete.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for my ARC. All opinions are my own.