I finished the audiobook today. I loved it, even though I'd strongly suspected the twist from the beginning. >!The layout. The insect sighting. The gravity. The lack of windows or any interest in mapping the changing stars. The 'too fast for communication' yet still clearly going well below light speed. They were all clues.!< The different voices and accents in the audiobook are both well done and betray a few convergences of the stories a little earlier than the prose.

While I don't expect a book like this to be universally praised, I was shocked to see how divisive the takes are. Very few folks were just mildly amused with it. I did notice a theme where negative review's didn't finish it (and I'm someone who will DNF a book I'm not enjoying with little hesitation, no hate). It's definitely a lot of unrelated buildup that starts clicking together like a mystery novel in the final chapters, so quitting early just means no payoff.

The characters' trials and suffering were interesting and engaging for me, but the events unfolding in the Idaho library were what got me hooked enough to stick with getting into the characters.