Authors can and should write beyond the scope of their life experiences, I get that, but editors need to throw flags when the content is so blatantly beyond the author’s knowledge that entire chapters can’t be written or should be rewritten. The amount of hand waving to push the story forward is… … it’s…. just… look it, somebody nodded their head with a polite smile when they should have rolled up their sleeves and put in the work. The biggest atrocity is how the characters process trauma. After Lucas is captured, people caught in months of torture just walk away… mildly inconvenienced. If you can’t write trauma, then simple have a mod freeze be an actual freeze. Another poor topic choice is the timescale. 35 years just passed and suddenly a 2 week death timer matters, while not explaining why 0.001% of that 35 years ago suddenly so critical. Just reduce the damn time to 5 years, something the author understands and can conceptualize around 🤦 The book isn’t “bad”, but the high amount of small deviations from “good” add up.