Pulley's books - and especially settings - are so wild and interesting and odd that I am quite pleased to also discover that she more or less writes the same book every single time.
Also I'm grateful she's finally named that one of her main characters is autistic and I hope she knows that this holds true in every single one of her books. (With, like, the possible exception of The Kingdoms but also Missouri.)
Obviously I loved this; I was looking forward to finally having the time to sit down and read it and it was even weirder than I expected it to be, blending Pulley's extremely careful eye for sociological detail with her usual somewhat bonkers approach to the nature of reality.
The fascinating thing about Pulley as an author is that all of her books ask the question "how can I tell a story where the bad guy is the good guy?" Not the irritating grey morality protagonist is crappy story, but a weirder question: what does the world need to look like for 1) the mastermind pulling and altering the tapestry of history for his own benefit or 2) a member of the KGB or 3) a murdering pirate or 4) (this book) a nationalist leader against immigration.
And the answers are always completely bananas (which is part of the point, of course. The distance between her heroes and the villains who share their ideologies in our world is vast enough to throw into sharp relief how much our versions are the worst), but it's the careful working out of what presumptions of villainy mean and the kinds of people who become and who resist it that makes her books so interesting. Along with, and I cannot stress this enough, the pining.