Reading progress update: I've read 85%.
After my last update at around the 41% mark, I eventually grabbed my physical copy of the book last night and skim-read a bit.
The narrative finally picks up at around the 75% mark. Too late, but at least we now get a sense of the greater picture of people trying to deal with the impending invasion.
The thing is, when Manning has something to write about, she's great at it, but for most of this book she's not had anything to write about.