I'm a well read grad student who's bluntly honest about all things, although I try to be most honest about myself.
I still feel like I'm a little lost: the one thing that's the downside of having a world that's all interconnected is if you miss out on something, or don't keep up with everything, you can feel lost.
Once again, I feel like I might have been better off knowing more about this universe, but nothing was so left out that I couldn't understand this storyline. Once again, it's more the way some characters interact that leaves me feeling as I've missed backstory, but it doesn't ruin the storyline not knowing.
And again, things were tied up nicely and I was drawn into this world. It's pre-Aphrodite IX, but either can be read as stand-alone stories. This definitely fleshed out a lot that was missing in Aphrodite IX, though, and set up the world that she's living in, showing the political discord, and human error, and everything that led up to the dystopia she's living in when she wakes up from her stasis.
I'm more and more eager to read more from this company. I hadn't really gotten into anything Top Cow, and now that I am, I don't want to stop.