Reviews and Comments

Why I picked it up
I remembered starting it a long time ago, but couldn't remember whether I had finished it or not. It comes highly recommended and I usually like counter-culture, paranoid conspiracy stories.

Why I finished it
I really enjoyed the first half of the story as we initiated Dane into urban magic and the hidden world. On this, the second read-through, I caught some stuff I missed the first time: allusions to the possibility that both sides might not actually be on different sides, callbacks that become significant later in the story once time travel gets really wonky.

The vignette about the Moonchild's attendant and his daughter really resonated with me during the first reading, and it was still really good this go-around.

But, it felt like a chore at times continuing through the last half. None of the major story arcs--especially the final chapters--were resolved in a way that allowed me to understand what, precisely, had just happened. It was ultimately a little too gratuitous and self-congratulatory.

I've read in places that the creators of The Matrix movies got their idea from this story. Which might be the case, but it also sounds like that joke about the guy who is currently sewing 529 bands/artists for stealing his song idea. You know, the one where the guys sings about how much he loves some girl?

The Invisibles and The Matrix are about a small group of freedom fighters battling a vast and global conspiracy that has already enslaved the human race without their knowing, but in the end they might all be on the same side in some abstract way? I don't know, maybe it's the same kind of situation where today, it's hard to appreciate how influential the Beatles were because everybody's been emulating them for the last 50 years. Maybe The Invisibles really was mind blowing in the 90s when it was written, but it feels dated now because The Matrix and others have been exploring the same topics.

Who I'd Recommend It To
Somebody who does tons of drugs.

14 year olds of any ilk.

Anybody into Illumanitus! and/or Discordianism.

"We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." - Louis Brandeis

Why I picked it up

My friend read it and every time she mentioned it, her eyes would get real big and her mouth would get real small, and she'd just sputter, "man, I ... geez."

Why I finished it

I didn't want to at times. I just got so frustrated and disgusted with these people and the harm they are doing to people. Literal, direct, physical harm to individual people in their employee, and financial, economic harm to every person who is not ultra-wealthy, and harm to the ability of our government to function.

And the motive behind all this harm? As Charles Koch himself explains it, "I just want my fair share. And my share is all of it."

Who I'd recommend it to

Everybody. Required reading.

I'd recommend it to my past self from a couple months ago, back when I started reading Hillbilly Elegy after somebody recommended it to me as a portrait of neo-conservative, pro-Trump America (which it is not).

I was looking to understand how our current political and cultural climate emerged, where its origins are among the people. What I now understand is that it did not emerge naturally from the people, nor did it gain traction from the ground up. It was instead carefully and painstakingly crafted over several decades of buying influence in public education, funding fake grassroots movements, and forcing plutocratic ideals into the center stage of our national politics.

Super hero comics!

What I liked about it:

1. Apollo and Midnighter, this universe's Superman and Batman, are married and raising a daughter, and seem to be just really kind and loving to each other despite brutally murdering tons of people all the time. It may be exactly that juxtaposition that makes their moments of tenderness with each other all the more sweet.

2. The appearance--and demise of-- The Americans, a one-for-one analog of the Avengers, except they're a demented, murderous, cold war era government hit squad. Kind of an easy and obvious gag, but one I enjoyed.

3. The fact that, in addition to fighting monsters from space and stuff, the Authority also quickly turns to toppling dictators and corrupt governments with extreme prejudice. "If we're going to save the world, we're going to make sure it's worth saving." Draws into questions of where authority comes from, and what to do with power.

To nitpick, it feels like they're mishandling the character of the Doctor. It's as though they didn't really think through the consequences of having a magic user with god-level powers on the team, and their solution was to give him a crippling drug habit to make him unreliable. Otherwise, in most cases, he'd immediately just magic the problem away, whatever it is, and there wouldn't be much story.

In all though, a really fun, refreshing, modern spin on the superhero team genre.

Man, Orson Scott Card doesn't know this, but me and him are in a fight.

Okay, so the interesting thing about this book is the genre blending of space-faring sci-fi and time travel fantasy. I picked it up in the first place because I was promised interesting and unique time travel mechanics. Having just finished the Gate Thief series, in which there is a pleasantly unique and "grand unified" magic system, I was looking forward to some equally satisfying science-y analog. But no. The annoying thing about this book is the fact that nothing interesting is done with this great potential. At all. Firstly, the time travel manages to be boring. Which is annoying because that's what I came here for. But more egregiously, the entire book reads as a mere preface to some greater and longer story, and while doing so manages to hamfistedly and tediously plod along through every fantasy trope and every step of the hero's story monomyth.

Not to mention the fact that it's Orson Scott Card, so all female characters are shallow, one-dimensional, and dismissible. And the heroes are improbably sophisticated 13 year old boys who outsmart, outclass, outmaneuver, and outperform any and all adults they encounter.

Solid writing. Good organization, good pace. Great balance of humor, personal tragedy, and literal crimes against humanity: while certainly dark and disturbing, it was never unbearably so.

Trevor's voice shines throughout. I'd love to hear him read it.

I'd like to hear the omitted part of this story, which I assume is Trevor's meteoric rise to international fame. His (legal) career is mentioned hardly at all, and I find his success all the more interesting given his tough breaks and illicit activities as a youngster. (Host of the Daily Show? How's this kid not in prison somewhere?) I think there's one bit where he's like, "I did a little stand up" and another where he mentioned he had hosted a (television?) show. And that's it.

In retrospect, it was almost like the story he wanted to tell was that of his family and friends, and the politics that shaped their circumstances. And he included himself only as much as necessary to tell that story.

Anyway. 10 out of 10. Recommended to everybody.

Oh, and, I'll quote @Mel here for you, because I didn't heed her warning, and I regretted it, and I don't want you to make the same mistake I did:

When you get the part where they're riding around on a bus looking for lunch, skip the next two paragraphs.

Here are some assertions Ana makes in her memoir.

1. Yoga is about fear, pain, and death.

2. She can see and manipulate energy/auras, talk to animals, pray holes in the ozone layer closed, and has been persecuted as a witch in past lives. But others who claim supernatural talents and/or experiences are phonies.

2.5 Oh, and once, she remotely healed a friend's uterus by channeling the magical weaving powers of a spider. But she accidentally sewed it up so tightly that they had to have a caesarean section!

3. She is a admitted asshole and bitch.

4. She doesn't observe the yamas and niyamas, and particularly rejects Ahimsa, asserting that her style of healing requires the violence of destroying negative energies and patterns, and often "killing" the former self. She calls herself a daughter of Kali.

While I acknowledge Ana has endured and persevered through a very hard life, I came away from her story very sure that I want to continue to enjoy the style of yoga she created, but separate and distant from the person who created it.