How to describe this book?
Let's try a plot summary. Hmm. It's 2023. Acrophobic Harry Gant builds record-breaking mile-high skyscrapers in New York. His crusading ex-wife Joan teams up with a holographic Ayn Rand to prevent a new global disaster, helped by Kite, a one-armed veteran of the US Civil War, but hindered by Meisterbrau, a mutant great white shark living in the New York Sewers. Meanwhile pacifist eco-pirate Philo Dufresne pilots his pink polka-dotted submarine Yabba-Dabba-Do on a quest to save the last ring-tailed lemurs, with a surprising intervention by the Queen of England. And all these threads, and more, turn out to be linked.
That captures only some of the inspired lunacy. For roughly the first two thirds of the book, very little seems to actually happen. Lots of delicious seemingly unconnected little vignettes, flash-backs, and random events are presented for our delight. The lack of perceived action isn't a problem, because the individual clips are so gorgeous. But then Ruff tosses in a lit match, and the whole carefully crafted confection goes "whoosh", with non-stop action as the threads come together.
It's surreal, it's clever, it's thought provoking, it's inventive, it's funny. It's wonderful. Read it.
Summer, 2009: Arab Homeland Security agent Mustafa al Baghdadi interrogates a captured suicide bomber. The prisoner claims that the world they are living in is a mirage—in the real world, America is a superpower, and the Arab states are just a collection of “backward third-world countries.” Other captured terrorists have been telling the same story.
The gangster Saddam Hussein is conducting his own investigation. And the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee—a war hero named Osama bin Laden—will stop at nothing to hide the truth. As Mustafa and his colleagues venture deeper into the unsettling world of terrorism, politics, and espionage, they are confronted with questions without any rational answers, and the terrifying possibility that their world is not what it seems.
John Chu is a “sherpa”—a paid guide to online role-playing games. For a fee, he and his crew provide a top-flight character equipped with the best weapons and armor for a host of gaming adventures.
Chu’s new client, the pseudonymous Mr. Jones, claims to be a “wealthy famous person” with powerful enemies, and he's offering a ridiculous amount of money for a comprehensive tour of the world of virtual reality gaming. For Chu, it means he can keep his fledgling company afloat. But as the tour gets underway, he begins to suspect that Mr. Jones is really North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, whose interest in VR has more to do with power than entertainment.
Chu also has other worries—the mysterious and menacing “Ms. Pang,” who may or may not be a Chinese government agent, and his angry ex-girlfriend, Darla Jean Covington, who won't let international intrigue get in the way of her own plans for revenge.
What begins as a whirlwind online adventure soon spills over into the real world. Now Chu must use every trick and resource at his disposal to stay one step ahead of the danger—because in real life, there is no reset button.
