Some of the content was just too unbelievable for me. I didn't realize this wouldn't e as realistic as I thought and I think that definitely influenced my thoughts on this book. i also thought the writing made it really hard to get into the book and I just really disliked the way text messages and virtual assistant conversations (I'm not really sure how to explain it) were written into the book as it did the same formatting as French novels do (no quotation marks, just a line break and a dash before the words the character said) which has just always been something that bothered me about French novels, and now, this book too. I think the book has great potential and with finding the right audience I think this book could become a good popular and well loved book but it is just not doing it for me.

This was a great dystopian novel with great quality starting from the chapter, I knew it was gonna be a good read. This was my first book by Samit Basu and I’m far from disappointed.

This is set in 2030-ish Delhi, who decided to tackle every big problem we face everyday more or less, such as climate change, its inequalities in distribution of wealth, but also in race, social class and gender, and how tech invades our life negatively. I loved the concept of the Realtime Flowing, it resonated a lot, where influencers are role-models and a staged “real life” and always in pretend mode, the struggles it brings to survive in this world with a pick of just the right amount of realism.
It is a subtle sci-fi, you can see it clearly but it won’t take off anyone and be too far out from now as society has grown to a turning point where people want to spend more time in Virtual Reality, hence why influencers, I talked about earlier, have more influence here. To the point speaking against current politics and government might make yourself disappear.
The world building was smooth. It was maybe dragging at the beginning but I feel it was necessary to not confuse the reader too much. All this in India and enveloped by its culture.

Joey is a Reality Controller, she’s supervising multi-reality livestreams of Indi, an online celebrity, also her ex-boyfriend) which gives her power but will be too immersed to see it. And Rudra, who fled from his wealthy family and privilege, came from very shady business, picked up by Joey to be her Reality Editor and will be taken under a sea of troubles.

This ends on a bit of an open conclusion, I can imagine a sequel, and will be there for it, while all characters appearing had a purpose to be there and were a key to the overall story played.

I received an advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of this book sounded interesting. It takes place in a dystopian near-future version of Delhi where Reality Controllers are basically social media influencer managers of semi-reality livestreams that are going on almost all of the time. Society has gotten to a point where people would rather spend more time in virtual reality than in the real world, which has gotten to the point that if you speak out against society or the government, you might find yourself disappeared. As the plot progresses, more information comes to light and the characters must try to figure out what sinister plot is unfolding. But really, most of it is just an information dump.

If any of that sounded confusing, that's because it is. I had a hard time really trying to understand what was going on in the book, and by the end of it I still don't think I understand. It seems to want to be a cross between the Newspeak of 1984 and the dystopian virtual reality reliance of society from Ready Player One, but where both of those had semi-coherent plots that more or less made sense, this one just had way too many things going on.

There's a lot of potential for this book, from its commentary on society at the current moment to its cast of characters. But sadly, that potential is wasted on very long paragraphs that throws way too many new vocabulary words at the reader without a chance to let them process what it is they just read.

This is a strange little book. Very atmospheric, with a world that feels immersive and realistic, spot-on about many aspects of our lives today. I liked the Indian setting, which is still a rarity in SFF, and was intrigued by the role of the main character in the story—certainly an unconventional-feeling protagonist, kind of like an NPC in one of the main sidequests of a cyberpunk RPG.

Those are the good parts. The actual book? It’s such a weird way to tell a story. Half the type I was annoyed because it was too explainy, going into extreme details about one thing and then delving into some other thing the next. Most of the time I was completely lost! Who is this character now and why am I supposed to care about them? Why are we suddenly reading about x when I was so invested in y? It made the book challenging, but not in a fun and thought-provoking way, just in a frustrating way.

The other thing that annoyed me was how this barely used its SFF setting. Sure, we get some cool stuff about climate change, wealth disparity, … the usual suspects in hot SFF works. But besides the confusing narrative, we actually get a fairly mundane story most of the time—sex scandals, people betraying each other, and lots of people just being shitty humans to each other.

All-over-the-place. Would’ve been a DNF if this wasn’t an ARC. I would like to thank NetGalley and Tordotcom regardless for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

DNF at 20%. I know the main concept and the world is epic and super futuristic. It also has the Black Mirror vibes (the dark side of technology): no privacy, saying a wrong things could make you end up ‘disappearing’. But the writing style is not my cup of tea. It’s confusing, so many info dump, many terms unexplained so I can’t properly imagine what is this thing called Flowstar, and many more.

I read an earlier version of this book and thought it did exactly what science fiction should be doing at this point in history; it's equal parts brilliantly inventive, relatable, angry, and blackly funny. I'm glad there will be a US edition now!