The Mimicking of Known Successes

The world building here doesn't fundamentally make sense, there's no universe in which building 200,000 mile rails to colonize Jupiter is more feasible in terms of knowhow or resources that fixing Earth or even colonizing the Moon or Mars. However, you owe it to the author to suspend disbelief on the central premise and go for the ride. The worldbuilding about all the heat and light coming from gas flames was so good it felt like it was the initial idea that the setting formed around.

The strengths were the worldbuilding and the formal language that made everything feel retro-futuristic.

The primary weakness, in my view, was that a good mystery often involves a unique or creative "perfect crime". In order to write a perfect crime, you have to work within the rules of the real world. If your perfect crime involves a creative interpretation of a fictional world, the rules you yourself made, it feels less clever. As an example, there's a reveal that a suspect had a creative way of riding the train. This didn't really feel like anything to me because the author hadn't previously established how people normally ride space trains.

There wasn't a lot to the love story, but I am guessing it will build in later installments.

I liked it and thought it was very funny that "conservative" is a swear.

A good read with a hero who might be considered to be neurodivergent today that kept me interested all the way through.

I've just reserved the sequel - The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

Imaginative setting with a steampunky feel to it. I liked all the travelling around on railcars. It's quite a page turner. But the characters felt a little distant despite the first-person perspective. Perhaps a tad too short. I'd love to read another story set in the same world, though.

Here's a book that doesn't have an over-complicated plot full of twists you can't believe in. Rather, the world-building is smart and to the point, it has just enough explanations and backstory, and you're never bored.