Cory Doctorow’s third novel blends ordinary technology, nerdista tech, myth,
horror, sheer astonishing silliness, and the Aspergerish quest of the
outsider into a demented non-stop juggling act that struck me as the
1950-ish Absurdism of Eugene Ionesco and Boris Vian melted into the
heart-touching whimsy of Jonathan Carroll and Jonathan Lethem, then steeped
in the crazed fractured realities of the Goon Show. Perhaps US readers are
unfamiliar with the Goons, a BBC radio series from the 1950s (Spike
Milligan, Peter Sellers) that crunched its way through genres and grotesque
voices the way Monty Python tried to do a decade later.
Damien Broderick, Locus Magazine
