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ujustcaughtmereadingliterature's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
scheu's review
1.0
I was excited to read this book once I heard the nutso title. Really excited, but I couldn't find a library that had it, so I sprung for my own copy. Woe be to me. I made it through the first 50 pages before stopping, and I wouldn't have read that much, except I was on a seven-hour flight to Honolulu and had nowhere else to be.
The first few pages are a hopeful kind of Gibsonesque new-century sprawl, as are the footnotes, but the rest is purpoted psychotic rambling. 99% of the book. Mostly incomprehensible although the core mystical elements were intriguing. It's entirely possible I just don't "get it", because big name authors like China Mieville (love) raved about it. I hate to think that an author I appreciate would sling BS. If any of my friends and/or Goodreads compatriots read this all the way, explain it to me.
The first few pages are a hopeful kind of Gibsonesque new-century sprawl, as are the footnotes, but the rest is purpoted psychotic rambling. 99% of the book. Mostly incomprehensible although the core mystical elements were intriguing. It's entirely possible I just don't "get it", because big name authors like China Mieville (love) raved about it. I hate to think that an author I appreciate would sling BS. If any of my friends and/or Goodreads compatriots read this all the way, explain it to me.
zurvanite's review
4.0
Gets a little tiring near the end but nonetheless inventive and interesting overall.
ginkgo's review
I don't know what to think about it. At first I thought it was as if Papus read some Lovecraft, the Social Construction of Reality and contemporary science, watched Screamers and The Exorcist and was pretty much inspired; then I skipped pages because I didn't understand - links, problems, Advil, wtf plot? Then I've catch a Moby Dick woman and WTF WTF FOR REAL. Warmachines, entities - it all started to make some semblance of sense. And it has become terrifying.
Lilith who's opening you up and tells her stories devouring you whole, dust as the element which encompass the time and space simultaneously, bringer and keeper of death with billions of travelling bacterias and such. We were talking about Gilgamesh and Ibn Maimun? Well, now it's US weapons "leveling all shelters, all erected entities", leaving only desert for expanding battlefield. Who's fighting War on Terror on the side of terror?
I've flown to the end and am standing, naturally, in the desert. Alchemy brought me no homunculus - only decay, mutant dead gods are a mess immanent to judgement, and radical paranoia is upon me.
I've read it and haven't read it. I do need to return to it, but maybe in chunks. Inspiring, that's for sure. But in an incomprehensible way.
I've flown to the end and am standing, naturally, in the desert. Alchemy brought me no homunculus - only decay, mutant dead gods are a mess immanent to judgement, and radical paranoia is upon me.
I've read it and haven't read it. I do need to return to it, but maybe in chunks. Inspiring, that's for sure. But in an incomprehensible way.
luisvilla's review
This isn't rateable because it is hardly even comprehensible. It's amazing and I'm glad it exists and I basically couldn't read it. Lovecraftian, if Lovecraft had written only in the form of sociology papers? And been obsessed with oil? Just super weird.
plaguevacant's review
3.0
This reads like the Book of the SubGenius would if it traded in the 50s sci-fi kitsch and mail-order cult buffoonery for multiple PhDs in Middle Eastern Geopolitics and Persian Theology.
nomadpenguin's review
2.0
A frustrating, difficult, jargon laden read. There's a lot of interesting concepts here, but they're hard to decipher, which is probably Negarestani's intent.
joyfullyexisting's review
3.0
It was interesting, but it didn't really live up to the hype (I was told it would be scary...). Also, I've read a bunch of accelerationist/ccru-type stuff recently, and I'm just kind of tired of it. The whole "adhere to being closed off in order to invite being ripped open" thing is uncomfortably familiar. It's the same kind of sentiment that amounts to, in its worst articulation, the idea that the only escape from fascism is fascism itself.