Matt Ruff is one of those slow writers. His first book came out in 1988, and this one, his third, came out in 2003, though someone I didn't notice it until recently.

I've read his first two books, and was quite impressed, but this one is definitely his best work yet. The books alternates between two characters, Andrew and Penny, though the author of the work is Andrew. They both suffer from multiple personality disorder. Andrew knows of his MPD, and has it fairly under control, with a sort of order between his different personalities, which he calls souls.

Penny, however, doesn't know what her problem is, just that she loses time and has trouble organizing her life. The story revolves around Andrew trying to help Penny, and then coming to terms with unfinished business in his own life.

I really, really loved the depiction of MPD in this book. In particular, the way Andrew has gained control of his is to construct a sort of mental geography and house, inhabited by his various personalities. Use of "the body" is mostly controlled by Andrew, but he lets others as long as they behave properly.

Matt's previous work were fantasy and a sci-fi-ish satire. This novel is more of a "straight" novel, though it's almost sci-fi in it's rather wishful depiction of the company where Andrew works, which is a software company building VR hardware and software. But that's really not central to the plot.

The book is quite dark, since both Andrew's and Penny's MPD were caused by very severe child abuse. There's nothing too graphic in the book, but there was enough to make me squirm and feel disgusted. Ultimately, however, the novel's tone is pretty positive, since it's really about recovering from past trauma and moving on, not about suffering.

The writing style and story reminded me a little bit of Sean Stewarts's Perfect Circle, another book about dealing with past trauma. Both books are really about people as much as plot, and the characterization in this book is what really shines.

I've been an atheist for as long as I can remember really thinking about religion. The earliest memory I have of me really thinking about this stuff was probably around eleven or twelve, and I remember concluding that the whole idea of God made no sense, since it raised more questions than it solved.

So reading The God Delusion was a bit like the choir listening to a recording of the preacher, but it was still worthwhile. Some of the points Dawkins' brings up were new to me. In particular, I liked his point that calling a child a "Christian child" or a "Muslim child" is really bizarre, since kids are too young to really make their own decisions about religion.

It also sort of stirred some fire in me that besides animal rights activism, I should somehow be working at "destroy all religion" activism (except Buddhism, which is cool and peaceful).

I actually spent some time discussing this with a friend of mine, and we came to the conclusion that to do this, we'd basically have to attempt to un-brainwash people pretty young, since people start brainwashing children with religion at a tender age. Of course, activists attempting to target children is pretty much asking for huge trouble. But it seems like once people are adults, they're so indoctrinated that simply presenting a logical argument against religion wouldn't do it any more.

Ideas for effective religion-destroying activism are welcome!

The title of this book refers to a biolog (aka blog) written by one of the main characters. And here I am reviewing it on my blog. Like, woah, meta!

Anyway, this one was good, and there's lots of interesting stuff in here. Basically, it's a first contact novel, except the aliens are far future humans, and the contactees are bat-like aliens. This sort of reversed first contact thing has been done before, but there was something about the way this one was done that I really liked.

One nice touch is that the aliens, while similar to humans in some ways, react to the first contact differently than I suspect humans would, which made them a bit more alien.

I also really liked the voices of the different characters. Macleod did a particularly good job with his blog author, who's a teenage girl, and there's just a touch of LiveJournal-style writing in it, but not enough to undermine the story with too much "our world" reference.