This is a weak 2.5 stars, and I'm a little mixed about it getting that much to be honest. I thought it was excellent. Right up until the end when it all went completely to shit. If it weren't for the truly awful ending -and even worse epilogue- that absolutely ruined the whole thing for me this could have been a 5 star read.
The story set up all these really interesting ramifications for the piper technology and the League that ran everything and the secrets that were being kept from the pipers themselves as well as the public and all the way through the book those were built up and built up and then apparently Carver decided "fuck it" because the end didn't bother to address any of it.
Atmosphere is willing to murder hundreds of children to make a point about the greed of the station inhabitants and in protest of the company hiding the fact that piping resonance works on people too and then...... nothing. Atmos goes on the run from the law for his attempted murders and from the League goons who are after him for breaking ranks. Jake goes to work for the League, not to study the piper tech and actually help it be put to good use like he was obsessed with through the whole book but just to use their resources to track down Atmos so they can be together. And Jake spends like 4 fucking years faffing around before he manages it and then they ride off into the sunset. The End. WTF? Are you kidding me?
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NOTHING to do with pipers or the League (or what they are actually doing or how aware they are of what pipers can or or ANYTHING about any of it) is addressed or resolved or even acknowledged again after a couple hundred pages of build up. So fuck that.
If there had been any kind of resolution of those threads that enforced their importance and showed why it was truly worth what he tried to do, maybe I'd feel differently about this. But Atmos tried to murder scores of children just to make a point, and then not only does he get away with it he gets a happily ever after with Jake and the whole thing he thought was worth killing children for is just forgotten by the both of them. I really can't emphasize enough how much that bothers me. I don't have a problem with morally ambiguous (or just plain dark) actions but this was just..... it made the whole story and everything that had happened pointless.
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