Reader's Discretion Advised

I hope this one doesn't fall flat. I feel like it's going to, for some reason, but I don't want it to D:post-read EtA:Whoo. What a consummate train wreck in slow motion.Adam's attitude towards Remy is actually quite annoying. He's so patronizing. "He's like an alien. Or might as well be. He doesn't actually feel affection, can't possibly feel it."Okay.I mean, I kind of get where he's coming from, but he takes it to such an extreme that it's weird. Adam created that persona and superimposed it on Remy and Remy, being the "consummate whore," took on that persona.I actually think everything he does kind of plays to that. There's just some underlying sense of contrivance about it all. It's quite odd.Certain points, though, I actually either believed or felt were/could be genuine. It actually kind of reminded me of Thom Lane's Runaway Heart - where the slave character (Finn?) said something about how even stronger than instinct is conditioning.This thing, man, is century upon century of revolution after revolution all superimposed and compacted into a matter of weeks and framed in sci-fi.Anyways, mid-way (actually, more like about 3/4 the way) through, I figured it out. The real ingenue is Adam. Well. That explains so much.And Remy, man. That dude's a survivor. And Adam can't seem to wrap his mind around that because he lives in this beautiful idealistic world where everything is beautiful and idealistic and people fit in neat little boxes - unconventional boxes by societal standards, to be sure, but neat little boxes of his own devising still.This was a nice change of pace because the slow-motion train wreck wasn't sex-relationship-whatever-related.Their weird-ass courtship dance was an overly complicated farce, a train wreck in a different way. It's interesting that she made Remy asexual. It actually adds an interesting/weird layer of complexity, although that was mostly ignored for the descriptions of The Revolution.Except then he wasn't. The placebo thing annoyed me. It was really gimmicky and ew.I think Remy totally gets the Underdog of the Year award in this. I mean, he's a lot stronger and self-sure (or whatever the term is) than Adam could even fathom to give him credit for. And I almost get the feeling Adam doesn't even try to understand Remy and instead loves to play at melodramatically declaring how little he understands him. Then again, I feel like I get him perfectly; he doesn't waste time with pesky societal constructs like continuity or illustrating each complex step of his thought process and how one thought leads to another. Anyways, I perhaps identify with Remy a little too much. Idk, man. I mean, I liked it, but I also kind of feel like these characters are completely different from what they were like in bk 1. *shrug