I liked the setting that Tidhar built here, but it took me about 100 pages to figure out that there was no plot, in a strict sense. The book is kind of a collection of loosely-threaded short stories, kind of a way of looking at the world from different angles. I wasn’t prepared for that, and the blurb on the back only hints at it.

Once you get that, this thing is rich as hell. Philosophy, art, religion,  and the nature of humanity are some of the themes that Tidhar is exploring here, and it’ll take another reading before I get them all. There’s allegory and symbolism in spades, and I think I only really picked up a fraction of it all. 

It’s a rare case where I wish I’d read more about the book before beginning it. I’m so used to a writer like Gibson having these intricate plots that don’t seem connected until the 75% mark, and that preconception took away from the first half of the book for me. 

Rereading this will be a pleasure though.