I dunno how to feel about everything in the end. I'm sure I'll be working this over in my head for the next few days. On the one hand it seems like everyone was finally happy, at least somewhat. The lunarians, the lustrous, Adamant, Phos, and so on. But it makes me so sad that Phos was never able to see all of the other gems again, or get back anyone he originally lost. He tried so hard to do what would be best for the rest of them, until he was manipulated by the lunarians into becoming vengeful. He didn't deserve what happened to him, but I guess that's a theme of the whole thing. Lots of people put into bad situations.
On the other hand, I dunno what to really think about the lunarians. Their cause was somewhat noble, finally trying to die after an eternity of artificial life, but did that end justify their atrocious means? All of the anguish they caused the lustrous, the fact that they lied to them until the very, very end, and that they had everything planned out for Phos from the beginning, their entire plan being to take a kind soul and repeatedly break it until only rage was left, and then leave it to continue to suffer while all of them could move on. As other people have mentioned before, I'm also a bit disappointed that none of the lustrous attempted to visit Phos during his 10,000 years of solitude. And I did find it a bit strange that all of them wanted to move on like the lunarians did. They seemed to show no inclination of wanting to die natural deaths despite surviving for hundreds or thousands of years prior to the events of the series. I guess 10,000 years of cultural integration will do that.
I think the thing that made me the most sad was the last interaction between Phos and Cinnabar. For so much of the book Phos had been the sole person on Cinnabar's team, trying to improve his lot despite all the other lustrous resigning him to his solitude. To see that after everything Phos ended up being the only person who hated Cinnabar, and that without Phos everyone else had come to accept him, was just heartbreaking. I wish they had met up at least one last time on better terms.
Finally, the one thing I was really left wondering was what happened to the original Ghost Quartz? Both him and Lapis were the only two that were never revived. What happened to them? Can we assume that their inclusions were destroyed with the rest of the lunarians and lustrous? I guess so, there seemed to be no inclination of them surviving.
