While the general premise of the book was interesting, it was not able to keep my attention. I the pace was quite slow, and I struggled to finish it.

This story definitely has that dark dystopian sci-fi feel, a bit similar to Altered Carbon on Netflix. Shale Nelson writing does feel very much like a TV show too, in how it's written, opening scene with a disturbing murder, then cut to 2 likeable POVs. However, overall I think Public Domain should've either been a longer book or world building pruned down a bit, because it just feels like the ratio of exposition setup to actual plot movement forward was imbalanced.

Nelson does a really good job of making his 2 MCs, Lewen Roi and John Shiver, feel fully fleshed out and alive--their history, motivations and what makes them tick, what they're doing to navigate life currently in their slice of the dystopian world, etc. I think what detracted from the story is how the side characters are introduced--it was like drinking from a fire hose. (54% in and still getting more characters introduced to us!) While a visual medium may allow digesting more side characters in one go easier, in written format, without any sort of diagram or visual aid, it really started to feel like a cognitive memory exercise, trying to track who's doing what, looking like what, for whom, etc. And so, the end result is, Nelson had really built out a rich world, with the 3 different areas of society full of characters in each slice, but pacing suffered. The characters hardly did anything to move towards a goal until about 70% in

This was a strong start to the Sons of Shikago series, it had that element that I wanted and enjoyed the overall feel of this. It had that world-building that I was looking for and enjoyed the way characters worked with this world. I cared about what was going on and was glad I got to read this. Shale Nelson wrote this perfectly and can't wait for more.