A Tidy Armageddon

The first, I want to say, about 150 pages were great, engaging and sometimes really quite anxiogenic (the idea of walking between stories high towers of just stuff organized in categories and holding together in an unknowable way just feels so claustrophobic even for someone who doesn't struggle with claustrophobia). But after that, I felt that the story started to drag and I struggled to keep my attention on it. The reoccurring descriptions of the piles was probably mean to instill a sense of how oppressive the landscape had become but for me it became a type of filler.

At one point one of the characters thinks of their child's interaction with a social worker and the social worker says to the effect that the puzzle piece has been accepted as the symbol for autism. It hasn't been accepted as such by the autistic community, it's something that is being pushed by Autism Speaks a eugenicist organization that is known for speaking over actually autistic people and to further stigmatize autism. I am well aware that the character might think something while the author knows differently but it made me uncomfortable to see it without the caveat since the autistic community already struggles so much to have its voice heard. The autistic community's chosen symbol is the infinity symbol (sometimes in gold and sometimes in rainbow), in case anyone cares.

I received a free eARC of this book from ECW Press through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My original review has been edited because I realized that I had unintentionnally misrepresented the nature of the scene (also see the comments below my review for clarification of the situation by the author).