@agmoore!! Where to begin! Seriously! This is just, wow! On the first look it can seem like there is a lot to take in with this story, but rather like a fancy bath bomb, once I laid back and let it fizz away, my word, it is incredible. The way it unravels, the dynamic between Casey and Gerald and the way you use that to build the two of them, and slowly reveal the picture of the wider world here, is just, masterful. Truely. You have actually left me at a loss for words, just wanting to be lost in your world. Reading this makes me want to go curl up and daydream about this world on its own, even without part 1.

(that said I really hope we get a Part 3, because although this is a part 2, it works amazingly as a stand alone story. And at some point, you get to bring this together into a full book, because I would love to know where it goes. Do they go to space?)

The way you set the world up here, and the wheels you set in motion, it feels like a real world. The details are complex enough to give that rich complete feeling, but not too much so as to be too confusing. The relationship, and boundaries of it, between Casey and Gerald is so endearing without going near the possible over sweetness of romance, and then that little line about no secrets in the colony that says so much about life there. On reflection, there is almost a hint of something sinister about the ending, she never agrees to join them, she is a scientist taken against her will yet counted as a resident of the colony. You weave such depths into the depths below the surface of the earth, showing two sides of a divide, one not knowing the other even exists, it reporting it on them. The image of Casey watching the capture play out is seared into my mind, a story both memorable, and beautifully told.