This book could have been great. I was reading it primarily to review for Prometheus 2019, and mentally tracked my rating...3 early on, when it was just word salad of references to other books and libertarian concepts...then shooting up to 5 for about 25% of the way through to 50%, and then back down to 3-4/5 once time travel and general stupidity came into the picture. It could have been a pretty clear 4.5-5/5 if he'd just stopped at the end of the book, vs. all the crap added for the second half to fill it out, and removed a lot of the fan service/pandering.

I think it's probably a reasonable rule that any novel which includes the novel's authors other works in-book as books, as well as multiple split personalities/wish fulfillment fantasy versions of the same author, is probably going to be a lot more enjoyable for the author to write than for a reader to read.

Still, there were enough good elements of the story to make it 4/5 vs. 3/5, even if I didn't like the overall book to that degree. ( )