The Fallen

Filling in more of the world build in The Outside, Hoffmann does a good job developing but the setting and the characters. While I still tend to object to depicting all neurodivergence as anxiety, I again have no standing to comment, so I accept her characterizations. The plot moves along well, and is again interesting and compelling. The biggest issue I have with this book is that it's really half of a book twice as long. Ending on a cliffhanger is both frustrating and enticing.

Book 2 of The Outside trilogy. This takes place six months after the events in Book 1. It's multi POV. It's also a neurodivergent normative world with a wide queer representation, including gender fluidity among others. The first half of the book was rather slow since details of the past six months needed to be filled to bring the reader up to date. Also some background stories on some of the characters were also included. It starts to pick up after the past events have been recounted. It's a story about occupation and repression, demonstrations and uprising where Yasira, while still the main protagonist gets a little less of the spotlight because of the numerous other POVs. Tiv, Yasira's partner also gets to play a bigger role in the story. While I enjoyed the overall storyline and plot, the first book was just much better and more dramatic. Despite that I still found it very entertaining and breezed through the book fairly quickly and I look forward to reading the final book.