This is a book that sprawls into meta-fractals sentence on sentence and teaches you to feel Zeno's Paradox in your body as you bend and contort yourself into the reading of it, and is composed in such a way as to make it impossible to skim, so if I sound exhausted reviewing it, well, I am.

But more than exhausted, I'm almost irritated by how much I enjoyed it.

One shudders to imagine what Moxon would do with the means to make a horror movie ... It all makes for an engrossing setup whose suspense is difficult to resist. But cheap entertainment usually comes at a cost ... Initial intrigue has devolved into plain magic, and magic is a dangerous ingredient for a work that has explicitly signaled a desire to address questions of faith and social justice. For magic will gift you superficial momentum, true, but only while reducing the power of the quotidian.

. . . [A]s this bizarre story expands like the Big Bang, sections start to cohere around what are essentially theological themes. The result is “Paradise Lost” but with more gangsters: a zany interrogation of religious concepts in a wholly secular context. The fight over who gets control over young Gordy is really a struggle for the messianic power he wields in this fantastical world. And when the tale soars into the realm of superheroes, it explores the moral complications of omnipotence and the paradoxes of theodicy. In his own strange way, Moxon has translated his eschatological revelations into the lurid colors of a comic book universe. Grand Rapids is the new Patmos.

If you make it through this brazen novel, the only thing you’ll want to do is find another survivor to talk about what it meant and what you missed. Call me.

. . . [I]t sometimes feels like Moxon is a puppet master who has lost all control, only to masterfully pick up the strings to get his marionettes dancing again in an entirely unexpected way. Delving into memory and belief as well as complex questions about authorship and ownership, Moxon’s astounding novel, bursting at the seams with ideas and pathos, is a breathless demonstration of masterful storytelling.

If the yarn doesn’t always add up and runs a bit long, it’s good fun to wind the characters up and watch them go.

Moxon’s storyline isn’t easy to follow, but it makes for a tasty entertainment.