This book arrived just as I was headed out the door for a business trip. I ripped open the envelope and looked at
the cover, "Oh good," I thought. "A fun book to read while waiting at the airport." For three hours in the crowded
waiting area of the F-Terminal at O’Hare, babies crying, drunken college kids goofing off, and cranky businessmen
taking their frustrations out on airline staffers, not only I was somewhere else but I was the only cheerful person
in the room.
Most of the communication between the characters is a scream. The characters talk like I talk to my friends; a
combination of intelligent and juvenile babble that is different for each person and reflects your individual
connection to that person. Erethay asway ethay inelay inyay igpay atinlay along with references to
television shows and classical literature next to words like syzygy that most of us will have to look up and
wasn’t in my spell-checker.
There was also the irony of reading this book at the airport on a suck-tastic business trip. (That’s a new word
for me, i.e. "suck-tastic", which I took to mean fantastic, or surreal, but not in the happy way.) It opens with
six people getting ready to make a parachute jump, and my seat cushion can be used as a flotation device over Lake
Michigan. The story primarily takes place in the artificial social environment of a college campus, a parallel to
the artificial social scene at Terminal F. Nietzsche and the "might makes right" discussion fit well with TSA and
Homeland Security entanglements. Why is Saban there? His boss says so.
You don’t need me to tell you about the plot; since you are reading this on your computer you can follow the
Amazon link to see that. You want to hear from me why I liked this book enough to have loaned my copy out and
bought three for friends on the day after I read it. It is absorbing. It is distracting. It is relevant and above
all it is clever. I recommend it to those who love mysteries, not because it has a mystery embedded in it, but
because it engages the mind.
I’m sorry I have to wait until June for the second one. Not.