eBook
Published May 17, 2017
Aaron Smith-Teller works in a kabbalistic sweatshop in Silicon Valley, where he and hundreds of other minimum-wage workers try to brute-force the Holy Names of God. All around him, vast forces have been moving their pieces into place for the final confrontation. An overworked archangel tries to debug the laws of physics. Henry Kissinger transforms the ancient conflict between Heaven and Hell into a US-Soviet proxy war. A Mexican hedge wizard with no actual magic wreaks havoc using the dark art of placebomancy. The Messiah reads a book by Peter Singer and starts wondering exactly what it would mean to do as much good as possible...
Aaron doesn't care about any of this. He and his not-quite-girlfriend Ana are engaged in something far more important – griping about magical intellectual property law. But when a chance discovery brings them into conflict with mysterious international magic-intellectual-property watchdog UNSONG, they find themselves …
Aaron Smith-Teller works in a kabbalistic sweatshop in Silicon Valley, where he and hundreds of other minimum-wage workers try to brute-force the Holy Names of God. All around him, vast forces have been moving their pieces into place for the final confrontation. An overworked archangel tries to debug the laws of physics. Henry Kissinger transforms the ancient conflict between Heaven and Hell into a US-Soviet proxy war. A Mexican hedge wizard with no actual magic wreaks havoc using the dark art of placebomancy. The Messiah reads a book by Peter Singer and starts wondering exactly what it would mean to do as much good as possible...
Aaron doesn't care about any of this. He and his not-quite-girlfriend Ana are engaged in something far more important – griping about magical intellectual property law. But when a chance discovery brings them into conflict with mysterious international magic-intellectual-property watchdog UNSONG, they find themselves caught in a web of plots, crusades, and prophecies leading inexorably to the end of the world.
Genius. 5/5. One of the best sci-fi reads ever. Genius plot, hilarious, superb world building, magnificent meta-ness. Ontologically, I would put it along THHTTG, but also better. It's also very weird, and I don't know if everyone would embrace the weirdness.
This book has just about everything blended together into an amazing and surprising novel that traipses through nearly every genre from historical fiction to humour, fantasy to political satire, and philosophical treatise to adventure-thriller.
This took a long time to read, mostly because it's currently only available as an online text, but any book that can make me laugh at bad jokes, giggle with glee at plot and character developments, and then make me do research and think seriously about deep philosophical ideas is a book worth reading in my opinion.
If [a:Piers Anthony|8516|Piers Anthony|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1445445112p2/8516.jpg] wrote [b:Cosmic Trigger|48622|Cosmic Trigger 2 Down to Earth|Robert Anton Wilson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347248510s/48622.jpg|983604]...
