Emmett's Reviews > You Bright and Risen Angels

Insanely inventive, but also extremely uneven. Basically impossible to summarise, since it's nominally a cold-war fable but also an absurd, anti-humanist bildungsroman about a human named Bug who sides with actual insects in a war against electrical engineers. There are amazing sections (the first long chapter on the Society of Daniel, the pool fight, the bar in Oregon), but by halfway through it starts to feel more iterative than creative. I keep seeing comparisons to Pynchon, but the prose has a pulpy feel that reminds me of 70s sci-fi. Reminds me a lot of Ballard (eg. The Atrocity Exhibition). An interesting novel, really fun at points. Probably too much, to be honest. Love the table of contents that extends beyond the events of the book...