This imaginative story with its mix of science and philosophy is a diverting read. The tale is told in first person from the viewpoint of a man who identifies himself only as the Documenter. He tells of his friendship from youth to adulthood with “probably the smartest human being that ever lived” and their alternate-reality discoveries and adventures.

Elements I liked:
I liked the conversational tone of the writing. It served well to highlight the strangeness the characters encountered and helped make the book a fast, easy read. There are some intriguing twists and turns and mysteries surrounding the events in the story.

Elements I struggled with:
Explicit sex scenes.
Unresolved events.
Blasé attitudes toward the drugs.

The explicit sex scenes in the first ~15% of the book were jarring and intrusive and did not fit the enjoyable conversational tone. The little they added to the story could have been easily expressed without the graphic descriptions. And they took the book too far into erotica territory – something that was not at all indicated in the blurb or genre labels.

A number of events that concerned and even alarmed the characters were introduced and then just dropped shortly afterward – left unresolved and unexplained, which contributed to making the ending unsatisfying.

The characters’ blasé attitudes toward the drugs, and the fact that no one really had any bad side effects from them, did not seem realistic. It stretched my suspension of disbelief just a little too far and interfered with my enjoyment of the story.

Overall:
There’s a lot happening in this story to keep a reader involved. An intriguing premise with some interesting twists combined with an easy tone makes the book a nice, light read. I found it an untaxing entertainment that unfortunately was, at the end, a not completely satisfying read.

(Read August 2021) ( )