This book was revelatory for me in college. It synthesized so much about the world; environmental collapse, failed states, science as destroyer, science as savior, reporters as heroes, reporters as exploiters, blah blah blah. Reading it was exhilarating and exhausting.

Reading it 20 years later, I’m more aware of its flaws. A Jack Kirbyesque level of exclamation points. Prose that is all too often intrusive. More characters than I can keep track of. A whole lot of them could have been combined to good effect.

This is a book that needed a few more edits. I’m no book-reading slouch, but I kept having to flip back to the beginning to figure out which nerdy scientist, which brilliant matriarch, which Midwestern white-boy gangster, which renegade whatever the hell I was reading about.

But hey, there are rogue black holes with rudimentary consciousness, death rays, an abandoned space shuttle that flies again, gravity waves, and, maybe, Gaea herself waking up. A great and ambitious book, with forgivable flaws.