She’s a weird and wild one. Books that have explicit sexuality at the centre of them can go one way or the other for me: they can be a rare access to a kind of communication I don’t really “get”, personally… Or, they can really play into the aspects I don’t get, and just feel completely obtuse and myopic. This kind of skirted the line, depending. Especially because Absurdism is the commodity here you really need to be buying; and I did, again, mostly. 

More than any grander themes or character work, this ended up being something I admired and enjoyed because it is very rare that absurdism works, and it does work in spades here. I snorted and outright laughed, and that’s difficult to get me to do; more so with literature. In a way, I was thinking this must be how people who like Snow Crash must feel. So, I can appreciate that.

Beyond that, though—I’m not sure I’m totally sold. People navigating life via invasive technology and the primary nexus being sexuality (which, does make sense; every advancement gets fed into the sex industry), also inherently makes it lack gravity, for me. Omnipresence was given the face of an annoying tech bro that should have felt a lot more villainous, but because Hazel’s dad is sandwiched between sex dolls and a dude can’t get a boner without thinking about dolphins, it’s all just… lacking… punch? 

Still, the fact that this works at all (again, especially for me), is quite the magic trick; so props.