Reviews and Comments

This book fills me with awe. When I read lines from it, I want to scratch down the words on my arms and legs, tracing the pathways over and over again until it breaks through the skin and seeps into the blood.

This book could explain to you in great detail why zombies and vampires are better equipped at reality than you are, bogged down with the delusion that life, reality, existence, consciousness was anything more than the random electromagnetic twitchings of an underoptimized local processing array made out of the closest stable elements near to hand.

It's interesting, but ultimately it's too close to his other novels. Morgan's a damn good writer and so it's enjoyable, but there isn't much depth to the protagonist -- even knowing that he's defined by his genes, he's too much of a typical hardbitten tough guy to really step outside of his role.

In some ways, this is a book about gender roles; how the idea of masculinity shapes men (the Thirteens), the femininity of women (Bonobos), and how people live inside a role or a body defined for them. It's full of interesting ideas; it's almost a shame that the plot basically forces people into such predefined roles for them. I would have liked Carl to have become a painter.