I enjoyed the book but there was kind of a problem with the end that i don’t remember if they resolved.
I seem to recall that the substance that stabilized the “gone away” world was acquired in such a morally repulsive way that the hero and company sabotaged its production. Which means that they were going to have to live with the effects of the gone away world, which is quite frankly eventually fatal. I’m not sure I understand how things were expected to work out at the end there.
I thought the point was that yes, the world would be more dangerous, but they would adapt to living in it as foreshadowed by Bey joining with the Thousand. Remember, it wasn’t the shadow people making the little towns disappear, it was the Jorgmund company swallowing them up to create FOX to keep the real world away.
I started it once and felt the same way, then I pushed on a bit, and the book became very different than what I expected. By 50 or 60 pages in, I was quite hooked.
Man, I remember buying this book a while ago because the fuzzy pink cover demanded I pull it off the shelf. I loved it for all the reasons people said, and the best part is that now I’ve forgotten so much of what happened I can re-read it and enjoy it all over again. Thanks!