!!!!! Minor spoilers thru the middle-end ("climax"?) of Book 2 !!!!!!

Omg so I overall thought book 1 was great. Some of the stories got really boring but probably 75% of them were actually really great. Like Martin Silas's chapter, was sooo boring the middle but it still had a good ending. And then the stories with the 4 score and 1 and Fedman banging the shrike lmao that shit was 10/10. The professor dude's daughter getting Benjamin Button disease literally brought tears to my eyes. I gave the 1st book a 5/5

I also thought the Shrike was literally probably the most badass villain/anti-hero I've ever met and literally started looking up tattoo designed to get him added to my back piece and started compiling excerpts describing what exactly he looks like. And probably put him in front of a lapis lazuli sky 😉

But man I've now gone through maybe 75% of Book 2 and broooooo like wtf has happened. I thought I would LIKE that the flashback sequences were done and we could focus on actual story but nooooo. I hate to say it but 800 pages into this story and I somehow barely care about the end when I feel like this should be the climax of a story.

I'll probably push through but mannnnnnn it's become such a struggle 😭 I actually like the Meina Gladstone parts but when it goes to Joseph Severn it's like wtffffff ughhhhhhh. Like WHY should I care about this fucking robot dude.

Why has the Shrike become a side/background character when he was literally THE intrigue of the first book?????? Instead we get NEW completely uninteresting characters that drone onnnnn and onnnnn omg. Who the fuck is Theo and why is he all of a sudden so important omg

Tldr all of book 1 I would read an hour a day or more every chance I got and literally started to research every description of the Shrike I could find in the text to immortalize him on my body. Book 2 whole starting "okay" has been a gradual decline into boredom and now I haven't picked it up in 2 days despite being mere hours from the end.