For a story about a setting that makes the subconscious a reality, it does surprising little with it in the story. This sticks out especially with Griffin. At the beginning (and through most of the book until around the last 50-25 pages) he is a one dimensional “guy you’re obviously not supposed to like” character. The problem with his arch of self improvement is that he doesn’t actually do any of the work himself. It is Ziggy who cuts the manifestation of his trauma and then he is immediately cured of his hateful behaviour the next time we see him. It makes what could have been a lot more interesting series of character development into a one scene fix at the end of the book. I also found Ziggy a protagonist hard to root for. She is, and stays as, the perfect and flawless main character who is always right throughout the story. Even when she shows a high amount of aggression it’s immediately followed by lines like “she hears herself say”, implying an outside influence from either the ship or Kovacs. And Toog’s death is completely shrugged off by the characters? The way the characters react makes it seem like they literally couldn’t care less that their commander is either dead or trapped unwillingly wandering the universe in the ship. Which makes it really look like the author simply didn’t have a place for him in the story anymore and wrote him out in a, frankly, mechanical and unnatural way. Despite all this, this isn’t an absolutely horrible book. There are a few good isolated moments and ideas and the right person would probably enjoy it a lot more than I (a heavy sci-fi fan) did. However, I can’t recommend it to the average sci-fi fan and I would say this is a lot more for people into spirituality and the subconscious, as they’re likely to get a lot more out of it.