They're all beautifully crafted, I love and hate them so much. I feel visceral rage towards Cairngorm and Cinnabar for forsaking Phos, but as the plot beautifully shows, it's not like they weren't manipulative in the first place, a trait emboldened by Lapis' head transplant. Reading it again helped me see that Adamant doesn't want to pray because he doesn't want to remain alone, away from the criminally cunning lunarians, the helpless admirabilis and the pure spirited gems. The lunarians, Enma in particular, are a piece of work. He was a facilitator of Phos' suffering out of his warped idea that a true human is a vengeful one. I ask myself if Phos' nightmare and subsequent rage wasn't the result of synthetic inclusions. A hint of that is Yellow Diamond's delusions of being a lunarian, that the scientist speculated was due to his new inclusions.
In general, every major character holds an important conflict, like Diamond and Bort's relationship, the amethysts, Alex, Enma, Ghost and Cairngorm, Adamant of course. That's just so good. Could've been so easy to make a completely Phos oriented story, but instead everyone around them is so alive. What really sells it to me is how non ideal they all are. Everyone has absolute scumbag traits right next to their most adorable ones. Such a refreshing break from the self serving good/evil bias we're constantly exposed to from all media. It's definitely an us/them story at some point, but nobody's absolutely right (so far), and the consequences of warlike scheming and self aggrandizing are shown realistically, if a bit hyoerbolically.