This is a compact book. The contents seem effortlessly written, and read like watching water flowing. There's no hardship in reading this book, apart from the contents; I won't go into details that may spoil this for you, but it's big, and I actually felt as though two books had finished by the time I was 11% into it.

The author's use of language is commendable, as it's easy to read and digest, while the characters and their inner thoughts are less palatable (to me, at least), but are so interesting, that I kept wanting more and more of the book. After half of it, interest waned, but picked up again after circa 70%.

I'll recommend this to all; it's a two-punch book, first for the use of language which I've seldom seen, and second, for the contents; the plot twists, turns, churns and is truly imaginative. Shan't say more. Go read.

Really dug this at the time. Was this the one about Hitler's pornographer? Can't remember ...

Absolutely fantastic!

Gripping!!! Still puzzling it out!!

As this book slowed toward its end, I began to think of it as the opposite of a love note--a hate note--to Adolf Hitler. It appeared to be the 19th century's hateful serenade to its most hate-filled citizen. Yet further than that, this turned out to be not the case. This book is far more human than that. It is just as dark, yet just as human as "the small miserable life of an old senile memoryless man" (257).

It is as dreary as it is compelling; as seductive as watching evil suffer. It is something like Samuel Beckett and Brian Evenson and Denis Johnson in one, but it is also something all its own. A spectacular book.

Holy shit.

An extraordinary and audacious book about the nightmare of the twentieth century, a novel of stories within stories interlocked in shapes that cannot be adequately described. A meditation on the nature of fiction, history, time, and reality itself. At the center of it all is Banning Jainlight, one of the strangest, most fascinating characters in modern fiction. A hulking man capable of extreme violence, he is at times lucid, at times deranged, and narrates with a maniacal sense of humor. Central to his story are the rise of fascism and the meaning of selling out. And his story is but one in a book that contains multitudes. A daring and surreal novel, astounding despite its flaws, that goes to some incredibly dark places and lingers in the mind.

I first read this book back in the 90s and remember reading it with only half an eye--not the book's fault: the chaos level in my life had just increased enough to make focused reading impossible. I rediscovered it in my bookcase last week and was amazed at how much of it I remembered the second I started reading. It's a tribute to the book that it made such an indelible, subconscious impression.

Stunning. Having just re-read this a decade on from the first time, I was blown away once again by the visceral reactions that I had to Erickson's prose. His writing is beautiful and sublime and thought-provoking in the very same moments that he is describing horrors and tragedies.

The novel is an intricate and tremendously woven story for which I think the reader must be prepared to be open to. The storytelling is beautiful and there are full pages which I could read over and over for their elegance. There's no reason not to enjoy this novel on its surface... But try to walk into this novel without expectations and allow it to wash over you.

Never much one for alternative history, Erickson's poetry catapults this beyond the realm of the strange and absurd into that of art. A haunting vision. "Through the warm fog of his last breath, he watched the memories of a hundred ghosts drift skyward to finally and vainly burst." Masterful.

4,5

Damnit, now I have to read Zeroville, though fortunately not as stylistic research for my next writing project, despite having little interest in its subject matter, on account of its seeming to be his passion project, though there's a lot of what I assume to be channeling of personal grief at and general wrestling with the 20th Century here. Parts of it are almost truly great, but there's also a great deal of pointless and lazy genrefuckery, stemming I, would assume, from what gave Zeroville life. Obviously a major influence on The Kindly Ones, which I love to bits, but, unlike that, this made me cry a lot, Russian Field of Experiments and whatnot, though the latter's more fun and has a stranglehold on tone, or, this being that period in history, tonality, haha...