A bit of wish-fulfillment. They struggle, certainly, but they never really feel endangered - never as much as the Loonies in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, for instance. The Loonies are fighting out of desperation; these people are fighting out of...concern? They want to keep their way of life. But they never feel/act like they really might lose it - huh, that's it. They act like rich people, sure that at worst they'll lose a little. The Loonies acted like poor people, afraid they might lose everything. Which makes that revolution much stronger and - deeper? Well, more exciting to read about. The idea of manna - of the culture of plenty - is clever, but it's never expressed in any way that felt like it had a chance of coming true. In some ways this book reminded me of Looking Backward by Bellamy - a wish-fulfillment with all the complicated details of how it worked and how the shift was made skipped over. Not to mention that I never managed to identify with any of them - the protagonist went up the scale of power just too fast, and none of the others really exposed themselves to the reader. Pretty puppets. This one and Metalaw are perhaps Correy's weakest books - which means they're merely interesting, not great. ( )