Chronolysis

The book keeps circling some secret, which is never revealed (although many of the characters, for unfathomable reasons, end up in a kind of Utopia ''on the far side of Uncertain Time''). There is a lot of cynicism about Science and Mankind and Glory and History, and a lot of world-weariness. All of which casts a spell - up to a point. About three-quarters through the book, I stopped caring show more about the clouded identities, the murky symbolism, the intimations of transcendence. And it became clear that in exchanging our ''entropic universe'' for a ''chronolytic universe,'' the author was offering a modern paraphrase of Descartes's central dictum: I am bored, therefore I am. show less