This book was all over the various places I read about books, to the point that I felt left out for not knowing about this mysterious Djuna character (only then to find out that this is their first book published in English). The Book Marks reviews are all ‘rave’s, but on clickthrough the praise is fairly muted. More to come on that.

The inside flap of the book tells me that Djuna had originally intended this to be a film. That makes sense, in that the action is wild and over the top, the story is filled in by monologues and it’s more spectacle than substance.

Which to me is a bit of a missed opportunity. The story itself is not really that interesting to me. It seemed needlessly complicated, and the book spent too much time having one character fill in another through dialogue.

The world itself — the society, the technology, the politics, the exploration of AI and consciousness — was terrific though, and I wish things had slowed down to really explore it all. I felt like I should read it again, but the complicated mystery thing at the centre of the book was irritating enough, I’m not sure I ever will.