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Cameron flies around a lot. He teaches himself how to speak (no, really. As a vulture.) He tries to talk to Glenda who's still pretty mad he hit her upside the head, and attempts to kill him before he manages to get away. He gets rescued by Merulo who's naturally a little upset that he almost died (since that means, given the prophecy, Merulo would've been next.) Cameron steals scones and shits down the side of the tower because the author apparently forgot how to tell a funnier joke than random bodily functions.

Merulo remembers Cameron exists and makes this overly described magic chain I instantly assumed would be for their future BDSM usage, because the great thing about books like these is you never have to wonder if the main characters are going to end up together or not. He uses the chain to pretend he has an intimidating pet to the chancellor of the kingdom, who gives Merulo high school science textbooks in exchange for microwaves. This is supposed to be very amusing since through incredibly subtle hints we are meant to realize the epic fantasy world is actually Earth, but remade with all computers and physics and mathematics erased from human consciousness since apparently humans had used it to pollute the world and turn themselves into immortal immobile cyber gods. This is all told to us in a long, long, long infodump where Merulo is explaining his evil plan to make the world like that again even though the air was so polluted it would kill you, because apparently that's better than living with elves and dragons and magic I guess.

Cameron is able to convince Merulo to give him a human body, ostensibly for the purposes of "cleaning" and being able to do that with fingers better than with claws. Not just any body though; a woman's body. Why?! It's never explained. Cameron isn't nonbinary, or genderfluid, or transgender. He's just a completely, totally cis man who specifically asked to be turned into a woman. I guess.

Enter ~hilaaarious woman shenanigans.~ Cameron's new body is simply too busty and curvy so she keeps accidentally almost flashing Merulo until he agrees to her demands for new clothes. Shopping montage! On the way to the shops she checks herself out and we get a description that sounds more like a description of a female lead in a porn game rather than anything I'm supposed to take seriously. And I quote;

"...[A] woman gawked back at me with familiar amber eyes. Ringlets of gold fell to her chin, a lion's mane about a face that glowed bronze with the sun. Her lips were pouty petals, her jaw slim and graspable, her breasts heaving under an unremarkable brown dress.

"'Well,' I said, 'Aren't you the pervert. Look how delectable you made me!'"

If this wasn't written by a nonbinary author it would be on r/menwritingwomen within a week. Why would you describe any woman like this? It doesn't help that the very first introduction we get to Cameron's female form is a paragraph about how her breasts are so unbelievably big she just has to carry them around all day.

After getting new clothes, Merulo decides that even though he wants Cameron to go back to the castle, because if she dies then he dies too, he lets her wander around because she wants to. Less than a week ago he was making Cameron eat rabbits and rotting squirrels. Did he suddenly start caring about her and I missed it because I too was too distracted by her rolling hills?

Anyway, now that that formative pillar of womanhood is done with, it's time for "feminine wiles." Direct quote from the book. Cameron decides that the best way to get information about what's been going on is to flirt with the knights since she's now disguised as a hot girl. Lot of transmisogynistic implications but I guess it's supposed to be ~funny~ and we're not supposed to think about very real trans panic laws. It gets even less funny when the knight she's flirting with tries to get her drunk and rape her.

Yep. It happens about as suddenly as you read it. Don't worry, though, just as she's about to get dragged away and assaulted, her hero Merulo comes through the door of the tavern to rescue her. He immediately starts berating Cameron for being stupid enough to put herself in a position where she could get sexually assaulted. She starts crying, so then he feels bad for victim blaming so harshly. This is because Merulo is a Good Guy. This leads to their first kiss, again, about 2 or so minutes after her near assault.

I don't know about any of you but I absolutely hate this trope. Man B proves himself to be a shit (either physically or sexually abusive) and then Man A swoops in to save the day, which of course leads to the main couple instantly physically getting together instead of dealing with the immediate trauma of nearly being assaulted. It feels like the "good" man is getting a prize or rewarded for not being a total scumbag. Anyway the predator knight comes back to beat up Merulo but Cameron pulls some fancy sword moves and Merulo stuns him with a spell. Now the would-be rapist is snoring while farting! So random xD! Is anyone else laughing yet?

While all these laugh-out-loud moments have been going on, there have been occasional interludes from the perspective of Glenda, the racist elf. This is where we learn how deeply bigoted she is- racist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, even fatphobic- the list is endless. On top of all her cruel and stupid bigotries, she's also deep in the throes of reefer madness due to self-medicating for implied ASPD. These are treated as equally bad and worrying as her bigotry. Oh, and of course she's deeply religious.

But ultimately, her main issue is her desire to murder Cameron, because he concussed her, which pissed her off. So ultimately, it kind of seems like that's really the main issue with Glenda and not all the other stuff. Ultimately, perhaps to a certain type of cynical reader, said reader might just believe all this comically evil shit and Scary Mental Illness is a desperate attempt by the author to make you really really hate Glenda based near-entirely on issues of social justice despite the fact that Merulo is actively trying to get the Earth back to a state where it was so polluted it was nigh uninhabitable. Both sides, I guess.

Back to Cameron, who's still a woman. Merulo is avoiding her because, speaking of addiction, this author is addicted to complete lack of communication. Issues never get resolved or addressed, merely moved past, ignored, and left to rot in the corner like a festering wound. You got nearly assaulted? We made out? You're a woman now? Don't think about any of that! Time for a loredump where Merulo reveals all dragons were made from massive supercomputer artificial intelligences. Don't ask questions about that either. The already-flimsy plot falls apart like a sodden paper bag when you even attempt to examine it.

Cameron begins to clean, reminiscent of reading Howl's Moving Castle (the spiders losing their homes bit is almost 1:1) but without any of the memorable or likable characters or any sense of immediate issues or overarching plot. She and Merulo occasionally have sex offscreen after she baits him into doing a BDSM scene with her. Sure I guess. Most of their development seems to happen in the implied sex scenes because they really don't have any chemistry on the page. They don't even have any shared interests. Suddenly, Cameron gets her first period! She doesn't know what periods are because her mother died when she was young and... wait for it... Merulo's did too. That's right. It's a two-for-one dead mom special. Why have just one dead mother for a man to feel great manpain about when you could have two? Double the angst, half the women you need to pretend to care about!

Anyway Cameron is acting super emotional and girly and upset so Merulo changes her back to a man. He immediately gets his height and muscles back because, as we all know, women can't be tall or buff. It's just not possible. He also describes himself as feeling "his calm restored... [and] ready to talk about things in a sensible manner." Right. Because women are just so damn emotional on their periods. You can barely talk to them! I should have made a misogyny bingo sheet for this book. Merulo, despite being able to stomach Cameron in his vulture form eating dead rotting roadkill, is so disgusted by periods he can barely speak. Periods are gross and icky and it's funny when characters are grossed out and disgusted by them! It's funny when basic routine bodily functions of many people across the world are mocked for entertainment!

It's now the halfway point of the book so the author remembers books, historically, have usually had some form of plot. The couple who are supposed to be falling in love have a fight where it's clear neither of them care about each other or what the other wants. Merulo banishes Cameron from the tower because he's just simply too sexy and is distracting him from his plans to kill god. (Because of course, in a book written by a tumblr poweruser, somebody is trying to kill god.) At no point does Merulo go "Hey. I may be an evil sorcerer but I'm not a total moron. If you die, that means I die too. So I'll just chain you up in the dungeon until I finish my evil plans or something." Unfortunately despite being able to study complex banned high school GSEs, Merulo is too stupid to realize the author is setting up an obvious ambush, so Cameron leaves and immediately gets jumped by Glenda, who we're supposed to despise even though she's the only interesting character in the book partly due to how desperately the author wants us to hate her.

Glenda takes Cameron to a clearing to kill him surrounded by knights. She tries to explain her issues and he judges her for her weed cigarette usage and wishes he too, had ASPD, because it sounds badass. (?) I'd feel a lot more comfortable believing this was part of his character instead of anything the author thought if Cameron had any character to begin with. His only traits seem to be casual misogyny and getting sexily chained up. Glenda tells Cameron that if he has any information on Merulo, he should tell them. He refuses. This is when the reader is supposed to spin imagined scenes where Cameron and Merulo actually connected instead of just talked around each other in-between fade-to-black sex scenes wholecloth from their head, so any part of this makes sense. Cameron can't betray Merulo, despite attempting repeatedly to stop him from his intended goals and outright admitting he doesn't understand or care what Merulo wants to do. Because Merulo is his "friend." That's right. It's an explicitly gay romance and they're still getting "just friends"'d for the nonexistent censors.

Cameron dies. Aww! Sad. We of course know it's not going to stick because there's still another 52% of the book left. In between chapters with no pages simply titled things like "In Which There Is Nothing" which we are supposed to assume is Cameron's point of view, because even when he's dead and gone from the narrative he's still more important than any of the women or whatever stupid thing they want. In Glenda's POV, she mounts Cameron's decaying bloodied body on a stake as a flag and storms Merulo's castle, apprehending him easily. But wait! Because Merulo is so smart (and apparently a dragon, so apparently an AI,) he uses her incredible fighting skills against her so when she cuts him, it's dragon blood, the last component he needed for a spell that rewinds time so he can save Cameron. Why wouldn't he just have used his own blood to rewind time before she got there? If Merulo's a powerful wizard, why didn't he have a spell to track Cameron so if he got into any danger Merulo could portal in and rescue him? It'd make about as much sense as any of the other magic bullshit that had already happened. There is nothing propping this plot up except the need for Literally Anything to happen in their relationship that creates the vague illusion of stakes.

Unfortunately since the Time Spell was so powerful, Merulo is now out of magic. That doesn't stop him from showing up as a dragon in the do-over timeline while Glenda is crying about being given head trauma, which is apparently the main reason why she wants to kill Cameron. Women, am I right? Always just so emotional about being hit upside the head. Merulo saves Cameron and they fly off together, only to get hit with the reveal that since he's out of magic he can no longer do his entire evil plan. Oh, okay, so exactly what Cameron wanted. So the book's over, right? ...No such luck, we're still only at the halfway mark. Luckily, Merulo has a sister, which is when we are introduced to Hydna, the first POC with a speaking role so far. And jesus christ she's treated horribly by the author. Her description upon their first meeting:

"In the midst of this awkwardness, the dragon contracted into a giant woman. Muscular, broad-shouldered, big of hip and thigh and breast. Just... large. Her clothes didn’t particularly impress me, being a man’s standard tunic and leggings, but I marveled at how they stretched to fit her contours.

'Listen, man, I’m not being bigoted.' The dragon made an obvious effort to soften her voice as she approached. 'My brother has never had a friend before. I’m proud of him, is all.' She dropped a hand on Merulo’s shoulder with enough force to hammer in a six-inch nail. It was commendable that he did not visibly vibrate.

I peered at the two of them in disbelief. With her tawny complexion, wild mane of burgundy hair, and overall glow of health and vitality, the woman could not have looked more dissimilar to my poor, pasty Merulo.

'Huh.' The dragon studied Merulo’s un-shoed foot, then looked me over in turn. [...] Her biceps also outsized mine by several orders of magnitude."

The first woman of color with a speaking role in the book is described as a freakishly tall bodybuilder, bigger than any man, with a "wild mane of [...] hair", who doesn't know her own strength. How did this get past the editors? How did this get past anyone with eyes? It gets even worse when Hydna almost forces herself on Cameron:

"There was a clatter as Hydna discarded her sword and raised her fists.

'Oh no, you can’t,' I started, ducking away from a blow that would have crushed my skull to powder.

'Hydna!' I skittered back as the dragon woman came for me. She raised a fist, and I plunged backward with enough speed that I lost my balance, meeting the hard pavement. This had to end it.

But the dragon woman followed me to the ground, knees slamming down on either side of my torso. Her massive hands, burning with a fever heat, gripped my wrists to restrain them. I may as well have been pinned by a bear. 'I didn’t tell you the penalty for losing,' she growled, her burgundy hair falling about our faces. 'You shouldn’t have accepted a fight without knowing the penalty.'

'Normal sword fight,' I yelped. 'That was the descriptor!' My legs lay free. I could kick upward, but would that do more than antagonize her?

'Normal for me.' Her triumphant laugh blasted like a trumpet so close to my ears. 'See, if I’m fighting someone? They die. But my brother, now, he wouldn’t like that so much. So, how’s about I break every bone in your body instead?'

'Merulo!' I cried shrilly. 'Help, please!'

'You think I can’t take on my idiot brother?' Hydna’s hands clutched harder, nails digging into my skin. Her teeth were as sharp as fangs, parted and wet. 'I could do whatever I want, to either of you.'"

This is genuine misogynoir. Your first introduced non-white woman (implied to be a black woman as well. Go to Google Images and look up "tawny skintone".) decides to use her overwhelming bestial strength to overpower the poor little blonde twink who's just not prepared for her to throw away her dueling weapon and come at him with her fists and scary pointed teeth. Multiple descriptions of just how much bigger and stronger she is. How "wild" she is. This is something you would find in a racist erotica from the 40's about "jungle fever". And it's in a nominally progressive book published this fucking calendar year.

Anyway, Hydna was joking! It was a funny joke because she knew from Merulo how Cameron got hot under the collar from threats of immediate violence so she decided to do it for a laugh. Wasn't that funny? Isn't that just some goofy humor? This is all happening in front of Merulo by the way, who got jealous just a chapter ago (in between progressively racist Glenda interludes) when Hydna gave Cameron a hug (described as "bonecrushing," because of course it is, because of course the "tawny", wildhaired woman doesn't know her own strength.) So when Cameron goes to bed that night, Merulo has already packed up all his belongings so Cameron can move into Hydna's room. Because we desperately needed a "Merulo is jealous and insecure even around his only living family" plot point, instead of any actual plot.

Speaking of actual plot, usually this is when I'd spare a few seconds to talk about Glenda's interludes, which are the only times the story isn't completely godawful-dull. Unfortunately that has ceased being the case as Glenda is now traveling with Domitia, a mixed fat dragon elf witch who performs gender magic for trans people and has the patience of a saint. Glenda calls her "mongrel witch" and is routinely disgusted by her eating. At one point they have a conversation about trans people, where Domitia kindly and gently explains to Glenda that she helps people to not "deny themselves", which Glenda responds to with bog-standard transphobic rhetoric that says nothing about her character beyond that the author doesn't like transphobes so they made their Evil Character an evil transphobe, because I guess the racism and fatphobia and murderous intent and terrifying marijuana addiction just wasn't cutting it.

In any case, despite being written by a nonbinary author, the pinnacle of success for transition is apparently being transformed into a fully cis body. Ignore all the intersex trans people, and nonbinary people, and every trans person who (like me) doesn't see cissexuality and cisgenderedness as the height of transness. Domitia is doing a kindness by transforming trans people into their true selves; cis, like everybody else. Isn't that what all trans people want? There are no featured nonbinary or trans characters, by the way, in case you were wondering. Maybe the author figured it would be too hard to include them without having to write another Glenda interlude where in the middle of journeying across the fairytale lands she looks at the camera and says "There are only two genders, lib."

Also, since Domitia is so trans-positive, this is where we get more (hopefully accidental) transmisogynist rhetoric. The knight who tried to assault Cameron earlier when he was a woman is angry that he was "tricked." Domitia corrects his usage of pronouns (because of course she does) and tells him that "if that was her true self, no deception took place." ...But it did. It literally did. Cameron, textually, used his form as a woman to seduce men and trick them into giving up information. Then, when Glenda correctly says that Cameron was just tricking people in a disguise (because that's quite literally what he was doing) she then immediately follows it up with transphobia. Remember everyone, just because this man in a dress pretending to be a woman seduced another man in an attempt to trick him and gain from it, doesn't mean that trans rights aren't heckin #valid. Domitia then recommends Glenda try weed that isn't a Shinzo Abe Annihilator Hot Knife 3000 blend, which she gets mad at because she's still under the effects of the dreaded reefer madness. But once again, Domitia is christlike in her infinite wisdom and compassion, suggesting Glenda let go of her hatred towards Cameron, and reminding her that "no one is beyond redemption." Turning the other cheek... a reminder that everyone is able to be Saved... where have I heard this one before?

It's genuinely fascinating that, in a world where the dominant religion is so very obviously based on Christianity or the Catholic Church (though I doubt the author knows the difference,) there is still so much emphasis on traditionally Christian morals and valuesets. Despite Glenda's deeply held religious beliefs, we don't actually see her ever being religious, just randomly bigoted to everyone else who isn't another elf. Conversely, despite Domitia being a fat mixed dragon elf witch, she's infinitely more Christian than Glenda. Wow! Really feeling the #themes of the book. I bet the god of the world who Merulo keeps trying to kill is a woman as well #queeringit.

Back to the underwater facility. Right, I almost forgot to mention: the entire "A" plot is taking place in a massive underwater biofacility set up by the previous inhabitants of Earth. Despite god attempting to delete all technology and math, everything under the water survived and just doesn't work when you get close to the surface. I guess god only had half a glass of supernatural powers left and just decided to focus its efforts on the bits most people would notice first. Cameron tries to convince Hydna not to go through with Merulo's plan because she's mentioned she has some concerns about it. Hydna hits him with an "Ummm, ackshually, I came up with the plan to kill god," which made me have war flashbacks to the also really racist bit of the TAZ: Graduation campaign where Travis Mcelroy does something pretty similar. Oh, you thought that because the writer set everything up to sound like one thing was happening, with no hints or clues for the reader that anything else was, that that meant that nothing else was going on? What an idiot! Is this one of the "twists" that Caitlin Rozakis recommended we stick around for in the cover's pull quote?

More Glenda interludes. Domitia says she's old enough to be Glenda's mother and that gets Glenda hot and bothered because what this book really needed was a romance between a mixed fat woman and a fatphobic racist. This is the only lesbian representation in the entire book. Domitia eventually banishes Glenda after they locate the underwater facility because Glenda is once again fatphobic and I guess that was just one time too many. She leaves her with some parting words of kindness because we all know how much minorities care about active bigots.

Meanwhile, Merulo completes the spell to give himself a wand, even though he can't do magic. The magic system in this is never fully explained which I assume is so the author can keep doing asspulls like "um uhh well Merulo needs a wand so his sister has to dismember him partially to make the wand but then he can cast magic just like normal again." After his dismemberment he's fine though because Hydna finds some prosthetics from all the people who died in the bioenclosure due to lack of food (because the hyperadvanced society who made the bioenclosure didn't plan ahead for any emergencies or have a way to get to the surface. Makes sense. Why are the main characters sheltering there?) Merulo walks completely normally with the prosthetics and can do everything an ablebodied person can do, which is, of course, every disabled person's goal. He even has some sense of touch when using them because god forbid a disabled character's disability was disabling in any way. Domitia uses other unexplained magic to possess a sea creature that sends a scrying bubble down to where Merulo and Cameron are in a scene. This is right before Glenda is sent off so she gets to be bigoted one last time and expresses her disgust for "degenerate inverts".

Merulo and Cameron escape through a series of portals that Domitia has trouble catching up with. Domitia takes this time to regret how mean and rude she was to her only friend, the racist, and how it was because Domitia was such a lesbian she couldn't help not making excuses for women even when they were violently bigoted. Then there's a bit of prolife rhetoric that genuinely stunned me:

"[...] What a day that had been, starting with a miserable, lightly pregnant elf rapping at her door, covered in the swamp mud she’d slipped and fallen into more than once, asking to be relieved of her condition.

[...] She drew breath deep into her chest and straightened. 'I’m doing the right thing. That’s what.' And the right thing didn’t always feel clean, or good, or leave her warm and glowing. Like with that poor elf woman, the right thing sometimes left her with sleeves stained with tears and the snuffing of a tiny life. The right thing was something you had to be strong enough and sure enough to commit to; the right thing was what was necessary."

I guess Domitia is so christian in her values that she also believes abortions kill babies. This is supposed to be one of the most sympathetic capital-g-Good characters. In any case, she catches up to Cameron and Merulo, who have just seen god. Cue more wordless chapters with titles about "Nothing". Apparently this is not surprising to Domitia, the wisest person to ever walk the earth, who tells them all that god is dead and died remaking the world. PLOT TWIST! Are you interested yet? Is this interesting yet?

Domitia decides to fight Merulo, then decides to leave him be because he's suffered enough, but he provokes her so she fights him anyway. Luckily Hydna appears just in time to save the day and stop her from killing him. By the way, Domitia is apparently Merulo and Hydna's sister. This is never mentioned to her and she dies without knowing it, sacrificing herself to save magic and not let Merulo turn into an AI. As if this book couldn't get any worse it just had a "bury your lesbians" trope. Everything's fine though despite Domitia's wreckage of a corpse still smoking on the horizon because Earth has been restored back to the galaxy and the lunar city sends a spaceship to rescue them. Yay!

The book ends with an epilogue where Merulo's digestive tract has been "fixed", also known as made abled again (every disabled person's wish.) He gets new shiny future prosthetics that are even more like limbs so he never has to worry about those either. He and Cameron find out they were all from a video game the being who reshaped earth based it off of since apparently the company for the live action series adataptation sent a capsule into space containing all the information about the series. This doesn't really seem to matter to either of them because they have bigger concerns: snuggling together in their big bed! They also find out the ship AI who saved them named itself the "Lunatic Freak" because those are apparently slurs now and the AI likes making people say slurs to when they're referring to it. So I guess that and Glenda is going to be the entire representation of this book for the mentally neurodivergent community. A raging bigot and a robot who calls itself slurs on purpose. Glenda survives, by the way, and is fine with Earth being back in the solar system among technology she neither understands nor is able to defend herself from because now she gets to be a lesbian. I wish I was making this up: "It meant the end of their peaceful norms. The end of Order itself. In this new chaos, cats would eat dogs. Fish would soar through the sky, while birds swam below. Rain would rise from the soil, men would bed men, and women would . . . women would . . .

Glenda didn’t notice the unicorn slowing to a trot.

Screams sounded from the forest. Harsh screeches trailed in the path of metal behemoths that shot across the star-filled night. Glenda wiped clammy hands in the silk of her unicorn’s mane, then sat back in the saddle, near breathless with the force of her thoughts.

The world was changed, irreparably. The order unbalanced, the status quo un-statused, the table upended and all the drinks spilled.

And Glenda, bobbing with the slow, lazy strides of her unicorn, rubbed at her chest and marveled at the combustion within her.

Maybe this did not have to be such a bad thing, after all."

The book ends with one last implied sex scene, and this bit from the acknowledgements:

"The first snippets of this book, I posted online. People said 'hey, I like that!' and left funny comments. Being primarily motivated by praise, I wrote some more. On my next post, I got hatemail ('why do you think YOU can write a book?'). Being secondarily motivated by spite, I wrote a lot more. Without all those online voices, this book wouldn’t exist. So, a massive thanks to everyone who crowdfunded my motivation! You made a difference, and a huge part of this book belongs to you."