If you’ve ever lived in or near the canyons of the Hollywood Hills; if you’ve ever faced foreclosure or known someone who has; if you’ve felt the rush of hope when Obama got elected, only to feel let down by what has actually happened; if you’ve agonized over the assassination of Martin Luther King; if you’ve struggled against racism and injustice in whatever way you can; if you’ve felt the panic of having no money, lost or roaming in a foreign country; if you’re interested in the concept of an American identity; then… I think you will love this book. The last paragraph is a beautiful lyrical crescendo. (Brian)

I'm with the LA Times on this one. Most of the time it was excellent but then about half way through there were a few bits that felt like they were taken from another book entirely. ( )

I'm with the LA Times on this one. Most of the time it was excellent but then about half way through there were a few bits that felt like they were taken from another book entirely. ( )

I'm with the LA Times on this one. Most of the time it was excellent but then about half way through there were a few bits that felt like they were taken from another book entirely. ( )

Ugh. Another Erickson novel that begins brilliantly, moves fluidly, has that great page-turning suspense, and then falls apart in the end amid a slew of lame 'trippy coincidences' that we all saw coming a mile away, a weak conclusion, and lame cosmic platitudes. The last 1/4 of the book drags it down from a solid 4/5 into 3/5, in the same damn way as Arc D'X, and with some of the exact lame platitudes, as if Erickson becomes afraid at the end of his books that his reader could not follow his fairly obvious themes through all the narrative's temporal and character shifts.

Here's one such example triteness: 'What would a room at the beginning of time sound like?'

'Zan will think to himself how music plummets into the personal and emerges as politics on the other side of confession.'

Jesus Christ, it sounds like what Eckart Tole might write if he was trying to be Thomas Pynchon.

Having read three of Erickson's books, he seems to follow the same MO: 1) Establish an ethereal plot and theme (usually pop culture-heavy and focused on identity and time) 2) build a fast, intriguing story 3) Establish a heavy-handed theme (music as lifeblood/culture, dark versus light as race, movies as imagination) 4)shift timeframe radically, go to some other place that seems vaguely connected (usually a mysterious female character---here it is sheba's mother) 5) WOW! The plot arcs converge in some phantasmagorical way! 6) The book peters out in a field of lame platitudes.


It's really too bad, because I always get through the first half of his books in a day, believing it to be one of the greatest things I've ever read, and they always fall apart when he tries too hard to be deep or mystical. Maybe he needs an editor with the balls to say, 'Pull it back, steve, your hand is so heavy right now y

Once again, the parts are better than the whole. Too bad because this had real potential... ( )