I mostly enjoyed the book. The characters are well-drawn, if sometimes a little too sketchy. But what really distracted from my reading pleasure is the very conventional gender roles that permeate all relationships. In contrast to the rather radical, edgy stuff he describes, this is really ... strangely distracting. ( )

Foretelling the future is hard. It's so hard that we award Grand Master status to writers of science fiction who manage to name any one thing that actually comes to pass. It's so hard that Sylvia Browne has made a vast fortune without ever getting one specific prediction right. (To be fair, she is really good at cold reading.)

I mention this because the paranormal here isn't vampires or werewolves running about buff and shirtless. Gavin and Farfalla can predict the future. For him, this means a lucrative career in accountancy in a venture capital firm in Seattle. For her, this means accurate personal fortune-telling of a kind that would make Cassandra squirm. He's a white boy from the US at the top of his game, she's an Italian who grew up in Brazil, and now tries to scrape together an existence as a translator.

And since a romance on its own can be tedious, we have the unlikely addition of a Cosmic Cupid sculpture to be found for a odd US academic, and the backstory of an unusual woman, Am??lie Rives Troubetzkoy, a Virginaian novelist who married first an Astor heir, and then a Russian prince.

There are Futurist conferences, philosophy, fashionable Italians, Brazilian voodoo, Swedish Methodism, steampunk novelists, time travel and state secrets. Although set now, amid the ongoing international financial turmoil, I would expect this to appeal to those who enjoy all the similar sorts of elements of [b:The Diamond Age|827|The Diamond Age|Neal Stephenson|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320415915s/827.jpg|2181158]. Best of all, it's a romance likely to appeal equally to men and women, tech fanciers and artists. It is amusing, quirky, earnest, and charming.

review (e)copy from publisher

Books added to the List that were mentioned in this book: [b:The Innocents Abroad|2443|The Innocents Abroad|Mark Twain|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320520180s/2443.jpg|6459342] [b:The Quick or the Dead?: A Study|2366521|The Quick or the Dead? A Study|Amelie Rives|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347644092s/2366521.jpg|2373320], [b:Archie and Amelie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age|10729|Archie and Amelie Love and Madness in the Gilded Age|Donna M. Lucey|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166289757s/10729.jpg|13361] ( )