Mindpowers are my favorite kind of superpower. I felt a little resentful at this book, because as a younger reader I would have taken this book to maybe add to the hope that mindpowers might be attainable.
Thoroughly entertaining adventure fantasy. I don't know if it can be counted as science fiction for even though it nominally takes place in an uncertainly far future of our Earth, it has too many far too fantastical propositions. My only complaint is that every adventure story must have some action or fight scenes that I find boring, but these were concise enough and moved the plot. Loved it.

Second listen: While I was listening, noticed a friend reviewed it as "it's good but you're not meant to enjoy it" and with that in mind listened to all the nominally horrendous things happening in the book and wondered why I don't feel like my friend. My take is that the events in the book became so fantastical, that it was like looking at a Dali painting, even if it contains horrors, they're shown through such a prism of peculiar and quaint, that I'm looking at them abstractly and am enjoying the whole thing.