The story starts out with far too much technical explanation. The setting and the science are too complex for the average reader to understand. We are bombarded with surrealistic landscapes, or perhaps mindscapes. We are inundated with psychological technobabble. Switches from second person to first person and past to present can give an added edge to a narrative., but when applied randomly or too often, they just confuse the reader.

At this stage, we question of whether we are being manipulated by the author or allowed to choose our own view of the tale. For the most part, it would seem we were being allowed to channel the experience on our own.

And after a while, we realize that we don’t have to understand it. We only have to be willing to take the writer’s word for it that it works. In the words of the main character,

“The language—‘network effect,’ ‘interlimbic,’ ‘neurobiological resonance’—washes over me in waves. I understand just enough to feel the edges of something vast and wrong and insanely beautiful.”

If we absorb the tale at a simpler level and let the evocative descriptions roll over us without worrying about meaning, it seems to work.

Because the real story isn’t about the tech or the medical science. It’s about the emotions and motivation of the people, especially the main character, who yearns for  that most human of goals: to return to a better time, a better place. In other words, home.  And this comes through clearly, allowing us to connect with him emotionally.

The bottom line of the plot is pure “Dirty Dozen.” Put together a ragtag team of misfits to accomplish the mission no one else will touch, and turn them loose. Plenty of action, violence gore and suspense ensues.  

And then we are hit with an apocalyptic ending that pretty well denies all the thematic material and destroys all the empathy we have invested. It dumps the whole story over to a god-like character and subjugates all the human effort of the characters to the needs of the author to create a sequel.

A writing tour de force that is “vast and insanely beautiful,” with an ending that is definitely “wrong.”

Four stars.