I tried, I really did. But I just can’t anymore. This story was not wholly without merit, but for the most part it is boring, boring, boring. At least the main female character has agency, but it still reads like a 14 year old boy’s fantasy of the ideal “independent” woman, with the antagonist being a shrill, angry, disrespectful harpy. I thought the story would pick up when he finally got to heaven and hell, but nope. DNF at 89%.

Audiobook, borrowed via Overdrive from my public library. Stilted reading by Paul Michael Garcia.
( )

In someways I think my journey to this book will always outlast the book itself.

When I was seventeen I told my boss I would read this book, that had been so influential to his young catholic school life. It was one of only two gallon sized bags worth of objects prized from my worst car wreck in my early twenties. It has been the lasting joke of a decade. Whether I had finally read it.

And this late winter, in the year I will turn 29, he sent me a second copy. It is pristine, and not as tender warming as the one that slowly is trying to die, but its very much still in this house with me. (And both copies likely find it queer, I read it on my Kindle instead of through either of them.)




I am not sure I liked this novel. It is slow and plodding, and it does not do details and relationships the way my favorite books do. But it was quite compelling, and I was involved with the point of the novel by about the one-third mark.

I can see very much why it changed his life when it did, though at 29, I can see why it seems for granted to me, with all my life has had in it. I'm not sure I'd rec it to others, but I'm certain I would still love to talk about it with people. And thus I will leave you the quote that will stay with me forever, too:





"Is this Texas, then, or Hell?"

"Well. That's all really a matter of opinion." ( )

So. This book.

It was probably one of the greatest adventures i've read on a long long while. Following Alexander "Graham" "alec" Gergermester through all the tribulations, dimentional jumping and pure anarchy of reality he was placed, how he learns to become more than a simple follower of the "word of god" how he tries to save everyone he meets to His grace, even lucifer himself, though he didnt knew at the moment, how he is faced with reality, how he learns to respect his "wife", the women who chooses to be with him, but also chooses to be herself, much to his raising conflict, how she respects him but still has her own beliefs and none of his prude attitudes toward sex or "modesty", well... Alexander is sent to a travel around realities where he becomes more and more human, but still has love for others first in his heart, and tries to save them all when he can.

It felt like i went with him for the hundreds and hundreds of years that it took for him to grow, you feel the weight of the time and still is an easy read, you are shown a picture of heaven and a picture of hell, and of what lies beyond, and its extremelly interesting.

its funny in many places how Alexander and Marga find themselfs having worked their backs off to just end in a different reality, where all the money they carry means nothing, its funny to pretend for a moment and see what the world would be if no one invented electricity, or aviation, or oil motors, or if this all was invented a few decades before we know it. Its a really fun set of universes, and its a really fun book ( )

A very subpar story by someone I expected much more from. I'm not religious so perhaps aspects of the fable are lost on me but a tale of a bloke who doesn't have a lot of luck, indeed, who God herself seems to be spiting, should have been far more interesting than this. ( )

I stopped reading Science Fiction 40 years ago, so finding this book at Goodwill was a flashback to 65 years ago, when I read all the SF I could get my hands on. I had read books by all 6 of the authors that wrote little blurbs on the dust jacket, and Clifford Simak, to whom he dedicated the book. I probably won't read this, but it was fun just to be reminded of all the great stories I read in the past.