Agreed! Interesting theory about the corporate metaphor, I'll have to read it again with that in mind (I was taught that it was all about sex and how dirty and awful sexhaving was and what kinds of trouble evil lustful sexiness could get you into.)

YES. "Y'all could have had ONE conversation and fixed this early on, but instead you waited months to do enough librarian stuff until enough things went wrong that you had to finally stop doing librarian stuff??"

Absolutely, the early chapter are my favorite, but the rest of the book's plotting and character development etc really go off the rails. I'm not quibbling about the science, I can totally suspend my disbelief when it comes to bloodletting or, say, the coincidence of five random people having compatible blood.

Did anyone else honestly find the entire book to be goofy af? Like how many blood transfusions are we gonna do here before your characters learn a single thing Bram? How many pages are we going to devote to nerding out about shorthand? The accent is just part of a rich tapestry of goofiness.