Main character Omon and his best friend want to go to space. They enroll in military school and get chosen for the cosmonaut program. Things turn weird. 

It’s alright. Prose (maybe the translation, maybe the source material) is thin and story is predictable, at least for me they were. You ever watch/read/listen to something and some out-of-place detail wrecks your suspension of disbelief, slapping you out of the world the creator(s) established? Like figuring out you’re in a dream because you know your next door neighbor isn’t a conjoined twin with your boss? There’s a name for this occurrence, isn’t there? Anyway, it happened here. A particular moment (which I won’t mention for spoiler reasons) and all was lost. 

All that said, it’s not a *bad* book. And if I hadn’t lately been knee deep in much meatier Russian literature, I may not have found this watery. But today? Right now? Meh. It just made me want to go back to Sorokin, which I promptly did. #2024books