Pinnacle leadership refuses to evacuate the affected floor and begins to flood that level, hoping to flush out the Child at the cost of hundreds of citizens’ lives.

Just as the police reach her, Yekini uses the power of the Queen Conch to reveal to the tower citizens the history of the Children and the corruption of Pinnacle leadership.

Hanchey writes that the relationship between Yekini, Ngozi, and Tuoyo can be viewed through the lens of liquid organizing, as they come from three different levels of the tower and cross social barriers in order to challenge the top-down hierarchy of the Pinnacle.

It also draws from the Big Dumb Object trope in science fiction while "also managing to tackle issues of climate change, inequality, and authoritarianism."

[4] In a separate review for Locus, Gary K. Wolfe compared the work to the 1927 film Metropolis in its "idea of social stratification enforced through architecture".

Wolfe praised the way in which Okungbowa utilizes interludes from present-day Nigeria to "credibly map a path from here to there" with regards to a future dystopia.

The review stated that the work "does lean rather heavily on similar narratives, some quite recent, like Rivers Solomon’s The Deep and Snowpiercer.

"[2] Writing for the Washington Post, author Charlie Jane Anders states that "the strength of Lost Ark Dreaming lies in Okuongbowa's careful attention to the details of how the systems in this huge, isolated building function."