This book is written with faaar more care than it could have been. It is deliberately designed to make you feel uncomfortable, but in the same way as a roller coaster: ‘This is not normal and I am perilously close to death but oh god the adrenaline and difference from normality I need more’. That kind of fun.
This is a book that makes you want to fuck a soul eating monster and what is effectively a child. It presents slavery as a good alternative. Corporate Policy is a saving grace, not a hindrance or source of overt evil.
And all of it is super fun. The above should make this book borderline untouchable, at least a cautionary tale, and instead you end up with a harrowing journey of extraordinary circumstances and a presentation of how just the right mix of selfishness and altruism can make so much more than just your life better, and be a positive impact in the world greater than any pure motive. I’m not convinced that moral is even correct, let alone ‘good’, but it’s a hell of a ride, and in a fictional world or relative morals instead of absolutes, it holds up and makes you cheer and cry at the victories and losses of our poor bastard of a hero who got the break he needed, even if it wasn’t what he expected or even necessarily wanted.