Other reviewers have mentioned the book's narrative issues, but I could have pushed through that pretty easily, given how short it is. What really got to me was the poor prose at the paragraph level: the overuse of the same subject-verb-object sentence structure, the droning repetition of passive "X was ..." descriptions when it would have been so easy to use a stronger verb. I'm not overattached to the "show, don't tell" axiom, but it definitely would have helped here -- the author would offer multiple sentences of flat sensory description, *then* tell me how Virika felt about what had been described, instead of weaving her reactions in more naturally. The dialog was also rather bad; it held up OK before the prison, largely because there weren't many long or detailed exchanges, but once Kalima started talking to Virika at length, the lack of rhythm and variation that marked the prose became even more grating -- it was hard to buy that Kalima so fervently believed in her cause when her dialog sounded so flat. 

Overall, the writing was just unpleasant enough to read that I didn't want to push through the second half of the book, even though it probably would have taken me less than half an hour.