A mess, but an entertaining one. As if Jack Kerouac got into a brawl with Hunter S. Thompson while they co-wrote the script to Repo Man—but less filling. A wild road trip steeped in Islamic youth culture that involves battling zombies, kidnapping a Hollywood celebrity and debating the value of Muslim Emo vs. Muslim Punk while seeking to do something about it all. I didn’t always follow the Islamic goings on, sometimes googling furiously for context, but I did appreciate the brisk and approachable writing style. I was reminded of the feeling of being young and needing to take part in a world that you are just discovering. The sex, language and violence will not be to everybody’s taste, but they are a part of the worldview. The inherent value of following Islam is understood to be a given and thankfully not a moment is spent justifying its presence in America. Being Islamic post 9/11 is to encounter many conflicts. In much of the book, the characters lurch from one battle to another as if trying to figure out which ones are important and which are just crazy distractions. The book concludes with a not so subtle lesson that what you don’t respect may bite you—not every battle is in front of you but rather sometimes occur inside.