I abandoned my previous read, so picking this up and devouring it in less than 24 hours was a welcome change in fortune! This has long been on my priority TBR, and since I recently found it at a used book sale, I knew its time had come. I really liked this. I loved the idea of humanity's Armageddon coming not as an asteroid strike or a plague or an alien invasion, but as a slow, boring, hopeless march towards mortality. I loved the author's choice of making the main character a pretty unlikable person, but one I could understand and root for nonetheless. I loved the description of a dystopian society shaped not by famine or war, but by grief and confusion and a mournful overabundance of land and resources. 
 That said, I wish this was longer, because I think we could've used more time understanding what made the Council and Xan's tyranny so terrible. The ending felt kind of rushed and weak. This was a five star read through the first 3/4 of the book, but I dropped it to a 4 by the end. 
 2016 reading challenge: a dystopian or post-apocalyptic book