The Ornamentalists

Setting foot in a dimension of their own creation, nothing but the information retained in their minds is able to make it through the portal, so  Xerkal, A rebellious cult member in a world that was supposed to be a utopia. The group was originally created to help get humans to see that the segregation between them and the komlughs was wrong, but it branched out into a cult that punishes the humans for their wrongdoing by making them live eternally in stasis to watch the world go by without them. Xerkal wants it all to stop, so he makes a plan to dismantle the cult, unaware of how difficult the task truly is.

The Ornamentalists wasn’t inspired by anything in particular, but represents the hardships of a society and the need for people to feel important by any means necessary in a complex of manipulation and deception. What’s good in this world sometimes isn’t clear-cut, and the implicit biases lead to explicit hatred. This book shows it’s important to have a neutral basis and stance on things so that no side can overpower the other. And was conveniently written just a year before the BLM riots.