There was a pause before "interested" that meant "acclimated," as if Mars was going to be just like the rez, except without oxygen.

When he learned he could drink the stars, he vowed / that even one burning sphere could never be enough

I absolutely love monsters. After all that talk of everything else, I neglected to mention I also wanted to write a book with a lot of monsters. Not just human monsters. I wanted to deal with the question of what is more horrific: a person who is capable of anything, or something that is literally monstrous and out of the bowels of our collective imagination? Rather than just sticking to medieval bestiaries, I tried to incorporate the parallel between different mythologies of similar creatures.