Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

I'd give this 2.5 stars if I could because I'm torn. This was definitely an interesting book, but I don't think it was a good book.

There's a few different things going on in this book, none of which I really understood as well as I feel like I should have. The absurdity had no purpose sometimes and I'm not sure what the point of this story was.

I like Cory Doctorow, but I wouldn't recommend this one.

Hmm, Cory seems to be suffering from diminishing returns. I loved "Down and Out..."; "Eastern Standard Tribe" was pretty good; but this novel kinda blew. I just never got around to caring about either of the two plot threads - the struggle to bring free wi-fi to the citizens of Toronto and the attempt to reconcile flaws of the main character's disfunctionally supernatural family. That said, the writing is good, and Cory excels as usual in his ability to paint cool pictures.

Very fun read. Imaginative and delightful overall. I only wish I understood the purpose of changing everyone's name every third sentance.

Oy. Is it a bad sign that I was most interested in the proselytizing portion of our program? The stuff with our hero's family was just too disjointed for me. Which is a shame, because I really like [a:Cory Doctorow|12581|Cory Doctorow|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1212526024p2/12581.jpg] and loved [b:Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom|29587|Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom|Cory Doctorow|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168033624s/29587.jpg|1413], so I really wanted to like this book. I'm just not the reader for it.

Let me tell you about what sold me on the impulse buy of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Cory Doctorow's latest and the first thing I've ever read by him:

First, the snippet of hook on the front that said "A miraculous novel of secrets, lies, magic--and Internet connectivity."

Second, the gorgeous cover art of a girl with wings.

Third and most importantly, the blurb on the back, which, among other things, tells the reader about a protagonist whose father is a mountain, whose mother is a washing machine, and who numbers among his brothers a set of Russian nesting dolls. It's that last bit in particular that made me go "Excuse me?" and have to pick up the book. Because I had to know exactly how such a protagonist could exist, and what story could be told about him. The story I got was arguably one of the strangest things I've read in a while, and every last word of it was a pleasure.

And I'm not going to say a damned word about the plot, because really, y'all should experience it for yourselves. Be prepared to strike a sort of Zen balance between paying hard attention to the story--you have to, given its non-linearity and how the protagonist and his brothers change names at random, sometimes in the same paragraph--and not over-analyzing what's going on.

More than that, you don't really need to know going in. You just need to know that this story of the son of a mountain and a washing machine, with a hefty side helping of Internet geekery, works. Go read it. For free, even, if you want to download the ebook, but this is a book well worth buying off the shelves. Four stars.