Maybe don’t read this at the beginning of 2025 if you’re an American, this will not make you feel better. It’s well written and very easy to see how the America in the book came to be, and how it could happen in real life. It is a heavy book, tread lightly 

I listened to the audio version, and the narrator was pretty good. 

I was really enjoying this book right up until the end.  Maybe I’d rate this a little higher if there was another book. I would like to know what happens next. But I think this was intended to be a standalone novel. 

Also, all the characters are just really unlikable.

Some you kind of like at points. Flawed people just trying to make the best of their situation, but then they do some really awful things that just causes you to really lose all respect for them.  Paxton may be the one exception, but it really sad seeing what he went through and not really getting a good resolution for him

But maybe that’s the point late stage capitalism just brought out the worst in everyone and incentivized the wrong things. 

This was both a quick read and a really hard read because it hits so close to home. 

In a dystopian near-future, a warehouse business called Cloud is America's largest employer. The company has demolished its competition, ruined small towns, and gobbled up the remains to replace with company towns. We follow two people as they apply for Cloud, and get assigned to be security and warehouse staff, grabbing the goods that people wait to obtain from drones as they order more, more, more with one-touch on their tablets. 

Additionally, we get the third viewpoint of the company CEO, who is dying of cancer. We get his essays that he's writing to chronicle his rise to success, and his justifications of his business decisions, which include things like ranking warehouse staff on a star rating system so aggressive that employees have to injure themselves to keep up. At the end of the day, they are awarded with it taking more than 40 minutes (non-work time) leave the facility and make it back to their room; the next shift in just 11 hours.

I don't know that I have ever despised a villain so much. Sure, I've cheered on heroes before to see the villain's comeuppance, but here... the CEO's words are words I've heard before. His reach is so wide that he wins every play. When good people try to make things better, he crushes them like a bug.

Man, I hate Cloud.

I am somewhat surprised I finished this at all, because this kind of dystopia feels hopelessly possible and normally I hate that. But I think I related to the tension in Paxton - fighting the corporation versus personal survival, hating the job but still wanting to do it well. I also found the perspective of Cloud's founder interesting, because he presented terrible ideas in a very reasonable way. (Zinnia's parts were interesting for the suspense, but I know too much about corporate espionage to fully suspend my disbelief.) It was a blend of horrifying and relevant - strange, sometimes uncomfortable, but thoroughly fascinating.