This was some excellent writing, but it was a disappointing story. The story of Alice May growing up, the setting, and the creeping influence of Servants of the State was just beautifully crafted and had me fully engaged. The story entirely lost it for me though as soon as she starts shooting. As soon as Alice May starts shooting she dies as a character. She is replaced by a gun slinging robot totally devoid of emotion that kills dictators because that is what it was programmed to do. As she guns down random mind controlled citizens and her sister without a twitch of feeling it becomes clear that Alice May isn't even trapped in a robot killing machine, she is just dead, body and soul. The story wouldn't have been significantly changed if she had been vaporized when she put on her shinny star and a robot assassin teleported in to go do some killing.
If she had only been either enraged, fearful, horrified, vengeful, or upset in response to gunning down zombie citizens and her sister, I would have enjoyed this a lot more. I wouldn't even mind her being transformed into a Roland-esque ( from The Dark Tower) badass that will stomp on anyone to win if she was rationalizing and choosing her actions, but she wasn't even rationalize her actions, much less choosing them.
Finally, I found the big bad she faced to have been disappointing. A little mind control here and there is fine, but this guy wins just by flat out mind controlling everyone who looks at him? Eh, it is a cop out. It means that no one is responsible for their actions. If he can just mind control literally everyone, I don't even understand why he is bothering to kill and intimidate people. I much preferred the Servants of the State that rose to power due to economic hardship, incompetent rule, intimidation, and maybe a little mind control over the one that arose because the big bad can mind control millions of people at once.
The writing really was excellent, as was the build up, but the execution of the action really hurt a story that I thought I was going to really like.