This is a hard story for me to comment on because I just didn't like it. Because of that I've been spinning it over in my head again and again to try and be fair to it, and I'm likely still going to be fair.
What it felt like the most to me, was a revenge story, I come at this because of the countless revenge stories I've read being a fan of transformation of people, starting all the way back with King Lycenae(sp) and so many stories of that subgenre are revenge stories. I don't much like those these days as they tend to be simple the story can be complex and the characters wide ranging but they always break down to something simple and usually cynical. Even if this wasn't meant to be just that it had that feel.
We have some background and very tropish, world destroyed by the "others" greed and now people who could be "better" exist. Our two cases don't appear to be much better but I agree with the few others that they seem, unreliable, at best. Why would we trust what they say, they might not have much reason to lie but then again their reasoning for killing people seems slim too.
Our Antagonist felt like an empty shell to me, pretty much the stereotypical wrong type of human male, and a politician to boot. So I didn't sympathize with him, but I also didn't sympathize with our protagonists. That might be on purpose and isn't required, recently reading the first part of a book about a Dark Elf, you have a protagonist who is an evil person, any good done was purely accidental, yet he was an interesting character...I found myself not caring about these two, their mindset, their interest in time and clocks...just didn't make me wonder about them.
I suppose that's about it, to finish up with a terrible quote, "there wasn't any there, there," for me.