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> Hey, there's *loads* of them, many of which I >haven't even read. RAW really milks that thing >for all it's worth... But you honestly didn't >like Illuminatus!, eh? I can see how that could >happen, but I enjoyed it a lot. But, the >condensation was right on.

Let's just say the book(s) was a lot of work for a small payoff. It was actually *difficult* to read the book, as I'm sure you know. That's not something I'm automatically against--I like something that stops and makes me think about what I'm reading from time to time. But this made me stop and think for all the wrong reasons, IMO. I didn't stop to think about the message the book was delivering, or about the story it was telling, I stopped to try to figure out who the heck was talking and when the last scene left off and this new one started and why the heck these two people are suddenly having sex. I'm very much pro-storytelling, and to me, the best kind of storytelling is the transparent kind--the kind where you never have to think about a strange turn of phrase, or about what is going on or about who is talking. Everything fits perfectly, and you forget that you're reading a novel entirely and are instead living the scene yourself. That's what I strive for in my own writing, and it's what I look for in the novels I read. Illuminatus!, with the silly games it played with the narrative, failed that task miserably. Worse yet, the story it told really wasn't all that compelling anyway. What it boiled down to is "personal freedom rules." Heck, I already knew that.