In particular, the rich's fear of violence is out of proportion to the actual dangers of the world. The world most resembles that of Blade Runner, which hearkens back to Metropolis, with the absurdly rich living high up, and everyone else living low down, where the rich simply can't comprehend the everyone else part.
Her friends are varied and almost mythic in their portrayal, some more obviously than others. Jane is a spoiled rich brat, but not really, still capable of growth beyond herself. I felt particularly riveted by the first person prose style, which drops us solidly into the character's idiosyncratic point of view and kept us there, through all her changes, both internal and external.
That doesn't mean that the ending isn't satisfying, it just means that the ending gives us closure in a different way than the happily ever after. The story is almost entirely interpersonal, a romance, not of the modern romance arc, where the happily part is mandatory, but more like the romance of previous decades, where an entire arc of a tragic relationship would be followed. Now, however, she riveted me from beginning to end. In a way, I was right, because at that age, this book would have been beyond me. As a teenager, I passed up this book many times, the subject matter looking uninteresting to me. Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover (1981) should have been a train wreck of a book, a totally misconceived notion with no possibility as working.
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