This was middling good, but not as mind-blowingly amazing as I was led to believe it would be. More of a quick fun pseudo-sciffy-genre read than anything deeply profound. The structural gimmick was sort of one-trick and overdetermined… when I compare it to other current authors who have intertwined structure and theme and content much more effectively(Powers in Gold Bug Variations, and DFW in Infinite Jest are my gold standards here), it comes up way short. A lot of this was just because there wasn’t much thematic content to flesh out the structural skeleton by comparison… the message was simplistic amd piled on quite thick.

I also could have done without the whole huge section narrated in dialect. At that point, he was just showing/jerking off. Still, the rest of the individual story tracks stood up well on their own, and I really got sucked into several of them. Excellent characterization and interesting world-building all in all. And his polyphony is definitely an impressive feat and fun to read in a playful pomo litgeek way. I’d recommend it, just not burden it with expectations.