A review by branch_c
Anthropocene Rag by Alex Irvine

2.0

Eh. Although Irvine's A Scattering of Jades remains one of my favorite books, I have to resign myself to the fact that the style of that book is not typical for him. He's clearly more interested in the experimental and the surreal, and this book has plenty of that. There's the literary and historical allusions, the poetic language, the evocative imagery, and even some thoughtful concepts, but the story, such as it is, is not much more than a roughly sketched background and a skeleton of a plot. Reminds me a bit of Zelazny, whose stuff has been hit (Lord of Light) or miss (most everything else) for me, with a hint of P. K. Dick, who even gets a tangential reference in the story. 

The idea of the post-Boom (singularity?) country and a set of travelers chosen by the whim of artificial intelligence(s) is interesting, as far as it goes, but for me, it doesn't go far enough.