BOOK REPORT: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Title: The Name of the Wind 
           (Kingkiller Chronicles: Day 1)
Author: Patrick Rothfuss
Copyright Date: 2007

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars 
                    ( Entertaining )

Back-Cover Description

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.

You may have heard of me.

So begins the tale of Kvothe-from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician, and an infamous assassin. But The Name Of The Wind is so much more-for the story it tells reveals the truth behind Kvothe's legend.

My Thoughts
The Name of the Wind was a very entertaining read; it is very well written and action packed. At first glance however, it blatantly follows the same hero's journey template that Star Wars and Harry Potter use.  Let's see if this sounds familiar: a young boy, Kvothe, who is very gifted in seemingly every way, encounters a life altering tragedy and is forced upon a path of justice.  But as the story evolves, the journey starts to veer off the beaten path.

What sets The Name of the Wind apart is that the Kvothe isn't necessarily a hero; or to be more precise, we don't know whether he is a hero or not. He could be one. This is a personal  vengeance and in this context, we don't know his quest is for the betterment of everyone or just himself.  His ire is directed against at an unknown enemy, but the spotty evidence points to a strange group who only exist in folk tales as the foe of a mighty kingdom long gone.   

His quest is quite a ride to go along with and takes some unexpected turns which is nice.  My only issue with it comes from Kvothe's knack at being great at EVERYTHING.  It can get a bit tiresome when it only takes him a few tries to master a new skill;  the movie version of the book will have quite a few montage scenes.   

I really liked this book and will definitely read the next in the series once it comes down to paperback prices.  I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a page-turning adventure that mixes the epic medieval scenery of Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth with the classic magical hero's journey we all know and love. 

GRAPHIC NOVEL REPORT: The Sandman by Neil Gaiman

I have a secret.

The twenty-eight books that I've read  this year are not the only things I've read.  I was sneaking in some other material.   "GASP!", you say.  "What could you be reading to keep it secret from the six people who follow your blog?"

I was cheating on my "word-books" with some comic books.  That's right, I read graphic novels.    I read the entire Sandman Series by Neil Gaiman.  You might remember Neil from such book reports as The Graveyard Book and Good Omens with Terry Pratchett. He is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

Neil's written hundreds of comics throughout the years, but his most famous comic series was The Sandman. It was a serial comic which ran monthly from 1988 to 1996 totaling seventy-five issues.

The Sandman series revolves around Morpheus, the King of Dreams.  Morpheus rules over everyone's dreams and is one of the seven 'Endless'.  They are not gods, they are older than them. The Endless are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Desire, and Delirium (who used to be Delight) 

Morpheus the Dream Lord

The series is broken up into ten graphic novels (over 2000 total pages!).    A couple of the graphic novels are a collection of one-off stories, but most of them are dedicated to one story-arc in the series.

• Preludes and Nocturnes 
• The Doll's House 
• Dream Country 
• Season of Mists 
• A Game of You 
• Fables and Reflections 
• Brief Lives 
• Worlds' End   <my personal favorite >
• The Kindly Ones 
• The Wake 

There is also bonus novel which came out in 2003 which dedicates one story to each of the Endless.

• Endless Nights

The series starts off when a rich eccentric recluse who doesn't want to die finds a way to summon the Endless and capture them.  Trying to live forever he summons Death, but gets Dream instead.  After eighty years, Dream finally escapes to find that he is weakened and his kingdom is crumbling.

After Dream gets his kingdom back in working order, the story line evolves away from Morpheus as the main character.  Instead, he takes a back seat to other characters and stories.  These comics show how much influence Dream has in our waking world.  Dream has been around from the beginning, behind only Destiny and Death and he has seen it all.  Love, hate, power and greed all start with a Dream.

I really enjoyed these comics.  There is an element of horror in the series (especially in the beginning), but each comic was infused with mythology and folklore. Some story lines were better than others obviously; there will be natural up's and down's to a series this long, but  Neil Gaiman is such a great story teller that the realm of Dreams really comes alive.  

The Sandman is proof that comics have evolved away from the standard super-hero/villain template from our childhood. These are deep stories with real character development.  After I finished this series, I started researching the genre a bit more.  There is a whole world out there of  well regarded, non-superman/batman comics out there that piqued my interest and I will definitely be adding them into my rotation.

BOOK REPORT: The Forgotten 500 by Gregory A. Freeman

Title:                           The Forgotten 500

Author:                       Gregory A. Freeman

Original Copyright :  2007

My Rating:     4 out of 5 stars  ( fascinating )

Back-Cover Description

The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

Here is the astonishing never-before-told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War II -- When the OSS set out to recover more than five hundred airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia

During a bombing campaign over Romanian oil fields, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local Serbian farmers and peasants risked their own lives to give refuge to the soldiers while they waited for rescue, and in 1944, Operation Halyard was born. The risks were incredible. The starving Americans in Yugoslavia had to construct a landing strip large enough for C-47 cargo planes--without tools, without alerting the Germans, and without endangering the villagers.  And the cargo planes had to make it through enemy airspace and back without getting shot down themselves. 

Suppressed for more than half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time ever.  The Forgotten 500 is the gripping behind-the-scenes look at the greatest escape of World War II.

My Thoughts

Shortly after the beginning of World War II, the royal family of Yugoslavia was forced to flee the country when the Nazi's took over in 1941.  The resistance movement which rallied together to fight this invasion fractured into two parties quickly afterwards.  The Pro-Royal Serbs under the guidance of General Milhailovich (the Chetnik's), and the Pro-Communist ( Partisans) under General Tito already looked past the German occupation to the new post-war government. By the middle of the war, the two sides took to fighting each other just as much as the Germans.  

The Forgotten 500 is a fascinating view into the logistical nightmare of a daring rescue mission to bring home hundreds of airmen in Nazi occupied mountainous terrain of politically unstable Yugoslavia.  

The book is roughly divided into four main parts. The beginning section gives the personal stories of several of the airmen who chose to fly a slow, behemoth of a plane across enemy territory.  It was interesting to learn what motivated and drove them to become pilots, tail gunners or the most dangerous of them all, the ball turret gunner. These brave men along with hundreds of others were tasked with bombing a major oil field in Romania and couldn't quite make it home. 

The second part tells the stories of the airmen post-bailout in the mountains of the what is now Serbia. The Chetniks saw the American soldiers as liberators and welcomed them with open arms.  They did everything they could to protect them, often at the risk of their own lives.  This section also outlines the back-story of the OSS, the predecessors to the CIA, and the people responsible for Operation Halyard.  One of the more interesting stories in this section is about the OSS officer who was the son of Yugoslavian immigrants; he was responsible for organizing the rescue mission.  For those who may decide to read this book, I won't spoil his interesting and serendipitous journey into the OSS, but I will tell you that someone who has that many close calls and chance meetings must be living right.

The third section goes into details about not only the Chetnik/Partisan conflict, but of the politics of allied British and American forces working "together" in the area fighting the Germans.  This was by far the most intriguing section of the book. The British were technically the lead force fighting the Germans in Yugoslavia.  The Americans were helping where they could but got their direction from good man Churchill.  The problem with this was that there was a communist double agent feeding the British misinformation.  The double-agent was saying that Milhailovich was secretly aiding the Germans and the Allies needed to support General Tito to make any progress in the area.  A rescue couldn't be attempted without British consent and they did everything they could to stall and hinder the mission as they saw it as aiding the enemy.

The final section is the aftermath of the rescue.  The troops were told to keep quiet about the rescue mission just in case any future rescues needed to be performed.  However, when the war did end,  the American soldiers were directed to not openly acknowledge the support given by Mihailovich for fear of upsetting the newly communist Yugoslavia, which was supported by the Russians. Shortly thereafter,  Mihailovich was executed for war crimes.  The role Mihailovich played in the resistance movement is still a contentious issue today and the many of the same dividing lines drawn in the sand during World War II were still fighting through the war in the Balkans during the 1990's which ended with the creation of Bosnia-Herzogovinia, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro.

The Forgotten 500 was very well written and thoroughly researched book which I would recommend to anyone who has an interest in non-fiction accounts of World-War II or military covert operations.

BOOK REPORT: This Earth of Mankind (The Buru Quartet Book #1) by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Title:                                This Earth of Mankind

Author:                             Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Original Copyright :       1975

Translator :                     Max Lane

Translation Copyright:  1990

My Rating:     4 out of 5 stars  ( powerful )

Back Cover Description

Minke is a young Javanese student of great intelligence, sensitivity and ambition. Living equally among the colonists and colonized of late nineteen-century Java, he battles against the confines of colonial strictures.  The son of a noble Javanese, he moves easily among the Dutch and their ideas and language bu is prevented from enjoying their rights. He also falls desperately in love with the beautiful Indo-European Annelies, and it is through her and her extraordinary family that Minke finds the strength to embrace his world- the world of Indonesia -- and all its beauty and possibility , brutality and anger.

This remarkable tale, the first in the Buru Quartet, was originally recited orally by Indonesian political prisoner Pramoedya Ananta Toer to his fellow cellmates in daily installments.

My Thoughts

I always find books that provide a glimpse into other cultures interesting, especially non-European cultures, and This Earth of Mankind was no different.  I can't say I knew much about Indonesia beyond where it was on a map, that is made up of thousands of islands, and that it is predominantly Muslim.  I didn't even realize that Indonesia was under Dutch colonial rule for close to  three-hundred and fifty years, ending just AFTER World War II.  This Earth of Mankind is the first of four books in the "Buru Quartet" and takes place in the late 1890's when the age of Indonesian enlightenment as Toer called it was in its infancy.

Throughout the book, I was overwhelmed by the complexity of social rankings at play in Dutch Indies.  There were "pure-blood" Europeans who were at the top of the totem pole, "Indos" which are mixed race, then "Natives", then the Malay and Chinese immigrants at the bottom.  Just as I thought I would get a handle of the general social dynamics another layer would be added.   

Our main character, Minke, is a Native who is the grandson of  a high-level native government official.  This entitles Minke to be one of the few natives which may attend a European school to get a European education.  Minke is trying to be a progressive, forward thinking Javanese native caught between two worlds.  The European teachers see him has stepping stone to a self sustaining Indonesia, however, to the Dutch government officials he is no better than any other native.  To his own people he is an outcast as they see him abandoning their native culture to become one of "them".

P.A. Toer puts This Earth of Mankind's  foundation in Minke's alien social status and pairs him up with his love interest, an Indo girl named Annelies.  Toer glues together a wonderful story of the tangled web of a budding love between Minke and Annelies, the daughter of a strong-willed, self educated native concubine who is determined to make something of her life, and her drunken absentee Dutch official father.  Weave in her jealous sibling Robert, Minke's own strict family,  a french painter with one leg, and a man only known as "Fatso" and This Earth of Mankind becomes a great, readable, and eye-opening novel.

Even though this book didn't end on the highest of notes, it did end with hope.  I will definitely be picking up the remaining books of this series to follow Minke on his road to enlightenment.

BOOK REPORT: The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell

Title:                           The Sparrow

Author:                        Mary Doria Russell

Copyright Date:         1997

My Rating:     4 out of 5 stars  ( interesting)

Back-cover Description

There isn't a true back-cover description, but a collection of review quotes which give the outline of the story.  I've removed the opinion sections of the review quotes.

"If you have to send a group of people to a newly discovered planet to contact a totally unknown species, whom would you choose? How about four Jesuit priests, a young astronomer, a physician, her engineer husband, and a child prostitute turned computer expert? That's who Mary Doria Russell sends in her new novel, The Sparrow. This motley combination of agnostics, true believers, and misfits becomes the first to explore the Alpha Centuri world of Rakhat with both enlightening and disastrous results ... < review wrap-up > "

"<intro to review> Father Emilio Sandoz [is] the only survivor of a Jesuit mission to the planet of Rakhat, 'a soul ... looking for God.' We first meet him in Italy ... sullen and bitter.... But he was not always this way, as we learn through flashbacks that tell the story of the ill-fated trip.. < review wrap-up>"

My Thoughts

The Sparrow was an interesting book in both story and construction.  The storyline kept me engaged with a good mixture of well-developed characters, meaningful dialog, well-timed drama and just a bit of suspense.  

I was most impressed with the anthropological aspects of the alien creatures in The Sparrow.   The same attention to detail provided for the human characters was also applied to the aliens and their world. The only issue I had was the seemingly shoe-horned in personality flaws of the aliens to set up the climax, but it was fairly easy to look over that and appreciate Mary Doria Russell's alien Rakhat. 

Mary Doria Russell builds the elaborate story from both ends, constantly swinging from the year 2016 before the mission started and characters are introduced, to 40 earth years later in the aftermath. Each time the pendulum swung,  it would inch its way towards the climax of the story which occurs roughly halfway through if told chronologically.  Although much is known about the tragic outcome of the mission to Rakhat, Father Sandoz's physical and mental state only help to provide mystery and suspense to the story of the trip to the planet with three suns.  

I would categorize this book as theological science-fiction, however, the theology isn't preachy.  The character's individual faiths are used as a lens through which we see them, but it isn't imposing, which I liked. There are occasional interesting theological debates between the characters, and not just between the atheist and the priest, but even between characters of the "same faith".  However, these debates are not the central narrative motivator. 

However, The Sparrow isn't without flaws. I did find some of the characters shallow in construction.  In general, the Jesuit Priests had character and depth, especially Sandoz.  Mary Doria Russell obviously put a lot of thought and detail into each characters lives, which made two of the characters stick out from the rest; the idealistic genius married couple.  The wife is both a cultural anthropologist and medical doctor and the husband is a retired engineer who can build anything.  They live in an ideal equal-footing marriage in which each is one-hundred percent supportive of every twinkle in their morally superior thoughts, words and deeds.  The couple was welcoming, warm, and happy to entertain any and all guests, and can make anyone laugh at any time.  I wanted to strangle them at times. Did I mention they were the atheist/agnostics of the group? I couldn't help but think they were written that way to help balance the theological debates about the goodness of man and the role in which religion plays in keeping humans from turning into violent hedonists. 

Character flaws aside, The Sparrow was a really good book with only a few minor glitches that prevent this from being rated higher.  I would recommend this to most anyone looking for and entertaining read with some human depth.

BOOK REPORT: The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake

Title:                                           The Hot Rock

Author:                                       Donald E. Westlake

Original Copyright Date:          1970

My Rating:     4 out of 5 stars  ( fun )

Backcover Description

John Dortmunder left prison with the warm words of the warden ringing in his ears and not once chance of going straight. Soon Dortmunder was riding in a stolen Cadillac with venetian blinds, reuniting with old friends and scheming to heist a large emerald belonging to a small African nation. As always, his planning is meticulous. As always, the execution is not. Undaunted, Dortmunder is now chasing the gem by plane, train, and automobile. Because this hot rock has a way of getting stolen -- not just once but again and again and again and again....

My Thoughts

The hot rock was an enjoyable book about a large emerald that just won't stay stolen.  This is the first book in a series of comedic crime capers based around John Dortmunder,  the aforementioned criminal mastermind who attempts to steal valuable items from difficult places as a hobby more than a source of income. The keyword is *try* in that previous sentence as things just don't always go as planned.  

The book starts off similar to "The Blues Brothers" or "Ocean's 12" where the main character walks out of jail, into a car, and plans the next job. In this case, a certain small African country wants to pay Dortmunder and his crew good money to steal an emerald from another small African country during an exhibit at a New York City museum. The first attempt goes awry which leads to successively more ridiculous attempts at snagging the stone.  Dortmunder could have called it quits several times, but he just won't let this one get away.

I would definitely recommend this for anyone looking for a fun and light read which will keep them entertained from beginning to end.

BOOK REPORT: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Title:                                           Lolita

Author:                                       Vladimir Nabokov

Original Copyright Date:          1955

My Rating:            4 out of 5 stars  ( well done )


Back-cover Description
Awe and exhilaration-- along with heartbreak and mordant wit-- abound in Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Most of all, it is a meditation on love -- love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation

My Thoughts
When Lolita opens up, it immediately sets this story as a memoir-confession of a dying man in a prison or mental institution.  The main character, and narrator, Mr Humbert Humbert starts off as a child of 13 falling in love one summer with a girl (also 13).  She dies of Typhus suddenly.  

We then jump ahead to his adult years where he is a writer and academic in psychology and literature and he still has a fascination with pubescent girls between the ages of 10 and 14. He admits that he is the creepy man in the park that goes there only to ogle the girls, or nymphets, as he calls them. He admits he's had several trips to mental institutions and that he often spends the evening with young looking prostitutes. 

How does one say that they liked a book where the main storyline revolves around such a off-putting pedophile?   This is where Nabokov shines and my experience as a literary critic falters.  I just don't have a way to articulate *how* Nabokov keeps you engaged in such an off-putting story. But he does. I can really only give you my thoughts as I read it.   

Lolita is divided into two parts. In the first part of the novel, you are in the head of a mad-man crazed by pure, unadulterated (pun-intended??) love and devotion to his Lolita.  It seemed to me, in the first chapters describing their relationship, that Humbert is a full on schizophrenic where he became that 13 year old boy again.  His adoration of Lolita, his nervousness in anticipation of simply being in the same room as her;  the luck of a glancing touch seemed just like a 13 year old would behave around his first crush.  Nabokov balances this out with a narrator that interrupts himself to correct himself, or to say that he doesn't quite remember this detail or that. It pulled me out of his head, enough to keep me separated.  

There were also very obvious omissions to his story which kept me at a safe distance.  Everything he recollects is his side only; he doesn't project emotion for other characters, he only provides insight into the scenes which actively or directly concerned him. The other characters dialog is only there to either frame his thoughts or move the story along, but only as much as needed.  For example, Lolita's mother, Charlotte, dies after being hit by a car whilst in a panic having discovered Mr. Humbert's feeling towards her daughter.  Lolita was away at camp at the time and gets picked up by Mr. Humbert who told everyone (including Lo) that she was merely in a bad accident and in a hospital that was no where near where they lived.  In the telling of this scene, the narrator never tells of Lolita's concern or anxiety over her mother's condition.  It's as if she is just there for the ride; happily content on being his seductress.   When she finally says that she wants to go see her mother, he says, "She's Dead" and that's the end of the chapter.  That's all that is mentioned of it. No, "She cried for days, or She shed a single tear and glanced off into the distance"... Nothing.  They just keep driving around the country. I think this is what the literary critics call an unreliable narrator. 

Part two of the novel deals with the unraveling of his "peaceful life" with his beloved Lolita. Cracks appear in the lustful walls around the story through which you start to see glimpses of how Lolita actually viewed the situation.  She wasn't the willing partner he made her out to be.  After Lolita "betrays" him and escapes, the walls crumble all together.  Again, this reinforces the unreliable narrator construct.

At this point, Nabokov transforms the story with a seemingly theater of the absurd quality where actual emotion on the part of anyone is scarce.  His loss makes him numb, and that numbness seems to be projected onto other characters.  Mr. Humbert's desire to kill the man who took the object of all his love and devotion away is presented in a simply stoic and matter of fact way; the way a farmer might say he had to kill a wolf who got into his hen house...  Except, in this story, the man on the other side of the gun is also just as unemotional about his predicament.

All in all, it was a very good book, Literature in every sense of the word.  If you can get past the base pedophelia, then it is a good read.

BOOK REPORT: Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Title:                           Picture of Dorian Gray

Author:                       Oscar Wilde

Original Copyright Date:          1891

My Rating:          4 out of 5 stars  ( well done )

Back-cover Description
Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged—petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral—while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even corrupting readers for more than a hundred years.

Taking the reader in and out of London drawing rooms, to the heights of aestheticism, and to the depths of decadence, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not only a melodrama about moral corruption. Laced with bon mots and vivid depictions of upper-class refinement, it is also a fascinating look at the milieu of Wilde’s fin-de-siècle world and a manifesto of the creed “Art for Art’s Sake.”

My Thoughts

Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray is a gothic horror story which boils the entirety of the aesthetic movement, of which he was a proponent, into a nice and neat two-hundred pages.  

"It is silly of you , for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

This was an enjoyable read;  Wilde's poignant witticisms and  social critique made me laugh out loud and thankful that I don't live during a time where I could possibly be on the wrong side of his pen.  

While the aesthetic movement rhetoric was, pun intended, shallow, it seemed a proper fit for those who, as Wilde states, practice the fine and noble aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.  

As a quick aside, I'm thinking of going back to school to get my Masters in Aristocratic Arts... Advanced Matchbook Arrangement looks intriguing, but I don't have the prerequisites yet ( Muted Gossip, and Theories of Understated Social Disapproval)

"But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment on sits down to think, one becomes all nose , or all forehead, or something horrid" 

 It was very interesting to me to see how the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde theme of the duality of man was presented by Wilde.  In Robert Louis Stevenson's famous work, the duality was brought out by a drug,  and his "alter-ego" was responsible for all of the evil doings.  Dr. Jekyll had a sense of plausible deniability in his actions as he was physically transformed by the drug; Mr Hyde was a different persona.  Dorian's duality is more subtle; it arises out of the sole desire to stay beautiful.  Dorian has no Mr. Hyde, no alter-ego. The painting becomes Dorian's "Tell Tale Heart"; however, because he can keep it in the attic, as his little secret, watching the painting show his every evil while he stays the same beautiful Dorian becomes a thrill in itself.   In both stories, the main characters start to lose control over the evil outlet and their actions become more horrific and lead to a self-destructive and tragic end. 

I really liked this book and would recommend it for anyone wanting a short dark tale that is extremely well written.

BOOK REPORT: Feed by M.T. Anderson

Title:                                            Feed

Author:                                        M.T. Anderson 

Original Copyright Date:          2002

My Rating:                       4 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Backcover Description:
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon — a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson creates a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire ushering us into an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.


My Thoughts:
Wow. That was a literary transition from Robert Louis Stevenson.  I started Feed about 6 minutes after finishing the short story "Markheim" by the aforementioned Stevenson.  The first page of Feed seemed to have, like, every other word, as like, ",like" or something.  Of course that was on purpose.  Feed is a cautionary tale about a society where the computers are linked directly to the brain at a very young age.  Instead of being used for "good and betterment" it functions just like any computer does today.  It is a vehicle for advertisements and social interaction.   It is just like, you know, having Facebook(tm) in your head ALL THE TIME, you know...  

The book is in the "young adult" section of the book store and I initially took the dumbed down language of the eighteen year old main character to be just that, the inner monologue of an eighteen year old.  But, I quickly learned that everyone spoke, like you know, like that and tthat M.T. Anderson knew what he was doing..  Everyone spoke the same, you know language, from the president down to the janitor.  

As I progressed through the book, I realized that there is a very deep subject here, and that is the dumbing down of the individual in the face of all the social media out there.  It really struck close to home.  In the world M. T. Anderson creates, every time a School or Cloud is mentioned it has a trademark symbol around it.  In this world, schools are corporate subsidiaries and clouds are a product.  Considering that this book was written in 2002, well before most of the social media addictions started, it hit very close to home.   

The back cover description nailed it fairly well saying this follows in the footsteps of Orwell, Burgess and Vonnegut, but I would say the biggest shoe it is trying to fill is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. 

This was a really good book and I would recommend it to most anyone.