F/SF

This is a very strange book, not only because of the absolutely weird setting but also because of the story telling. I think I have never read a book in which the narrator was actively holding back information and telling me things that turned out not to be true. This made the book seem a little "alive" and made the mystery very interesting.
I wasn't really into the book at first, even though I really liked the writing style, but when the story started heating up I was hooked and read through to the end in one go. ( )

Wow. Ok. That was unexpected, for a number of reasons. Let me start with the easiest, most personal one - I try to reserve my "eyeball" reading time for books that either I can't get in audio format, or for short story collections, as I sometimes like to juggle multiple short story books simultaneously, and that's much easier with my eyes. For some reason, I'd tagged this book as a short story collection. Since it doesn't appear to have ever been produced in audiobook format, and is highly rated by goodreads' users, I finally pulled it off of my to-read shelf after 2 1/2 years.
Right off the bat, I determine that it's not a short story collection, but I decide to stick with it. That was my first, personal "unexpected" - a simple miscategorization on my part.
Since I'd somehow mis-tagged it as a SS, then the follow up to that was that I didn't read the description, and I didn't read that it had received a Philip K. Dick award.
I like PKD, especially his books that deal with unreliable realities. So it didn't take long for this book to really CLICK with me. At one point, the main character has a discussion with the walls of his neighborhood about the color of his pants. I immediately mentally tagged this one as WEIRD.
And it continued from there. Weird. Witty. Thrilling. Mind-bending. Touching. Surprising. Unexpected.
I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
( )

Weird. Really. Hard to classify too. The first half of the book follows Stark, who is hired to find an important person, who is believed to have been kidnapped. He lives in an interesting alternative world, with many oddball friends and neighborhoods, my favorite of which is the Cat Neighborhood. About halfway through, everything changes as we are abruptly transitioned into a dreamworld, with little upfront explanation. As the explanation unfolds bit by bit, we long for a cohesive end. There is an ending, but it was unsatisfying as we learned how Stark became who he is. Perhaps most frustrating, at least to me, was the introduction of central and pivotal characters in the last 20-25 pages. ( )

5 Star Favorite. Brilliant surreal sci-fi. ( )