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I can't give this one stars because I don't know how many is fair. The writing style is densely packed, and that's not to my personal preference, but this is still quite well-written.

My problem is more with some of the content. Especially the bits about dismembering a dead cat, and casual discussion of torturing cats to death in the past. It kinda came out of nowhere and left me feeling shaken, because I wasn't prepared to brace for it. Nothing is particularly detailed, other than the stench, but still. No, thanks.

It's luckily a minor part of the story, the concept of which does admittedly intrigue me. I just... don't care for the ending.

I don't like the idea of someone choosing to forcibly erase who other people are in an attempt to remove racism from the world by turning everyone's skin dark. That's not how human nature works. People would still know how they used to look - would still have the same minds, because identity is much further than skin deep - and those who already were racist would just have more hatred for what they'd been forced to look like without consent. Not some sudden, magic understanding and empathy for those who've been marginalized.Granted, we only see the optimistic plotting and not the outcome, so I can't say for certain what the author envisioned actually happening. But that's a huge thing to leave out!Also, way too much emphasis is put onto white people, with a small aside:???And what about everyone else???s identities? There are more than just white and Black people in the world.???Does this character not know that there are many, many non-white people who are racist? Does she think that because some white people are racist trash, none have identities and lives worth respecting? It all just rubs me the wrong way. It feels like hatred to combat hatred instead of a genuine attempt to make the world better. I can't stand that mentality, so it soured my opinion in ways I'm not sure are fair since it's just one character's biased, emotionally-driven idea in a moment of grief.

Everything until the end was, though not always fully engaging due to my disinterest in the denser-written portions, actually rather good. (Cat desecration aside, of course.) The nano-magic was interesting once I got past how jarringly unrealistic the ‘science' felt (I won't say was; I'm no scientist, it just sounded off to me, but for all I know could be plausible).

But instead of exploring and lingering on the character we already met and her actions, the story shifts to the future long after she's dead and tosses us into a scene where an unknown man is having some kind of anxiety attack which almost seems to include age regression - I thought he was a small child based on how he spoke and was spoken to at first - and we learn he's been the victim of police brutality. This is used as a jumping-off point for his lover's descent into the ending I didn't care for, using a neural imprint AI type thing of the character we already knew as a co-conspirator.

I'm just... at a loss, here. I don't know how to fairly rate the story. I wanted so much more of the middle, and so much less of the beginning and end. Maybe this would work for me as a full-length novel with time to meet all the characters and see more of what happens.

Perhaps I'd even like the ending if it were expanded to explore repercussions instead of being presented as a potential cure-all. I don't know. That's basically the main emotion I got from this: “I just don't know.”