The Steel Remains

I dunno. This book was really hard to get into. Nothing much happens until the final third, and a lot of the setup is confusing. I was intrigued by the world-building, but the characters mostly fell flat for me (not to mention the 3 main characters all seem to have the same exact voice; in my opinion it only fits one of them, and it's not the main guy). A gay male protagonist would have been so much more genre-busting if I thought the author did it for any other reason than to be shocking. I felt like I could see his hand a little too much throughout–everyone else in the book constantly uses pejoratives when discussing our “hero,” the hero himself is a rather one-note bottomless pit of self-loathing, and overall the sex scenes seem more about power and mastery than anything else, which makes it trope and not “twisting” (much less “taking an axe to”) “genre cliches” as suggested by the enthusiastic cover blurb.