First thing: this is certainly not a book for everyone. I have been following Monica Byrne's blog for a couple months now and the only reason I hadn't read the book so far was because I was busy with my dissertation, as I knew I'd probably love it. And I did. I truly did. But I didn't love it in the way that I had anticipated. 
 You see, this book is so crammed up with cultural concerns - and that is precisely one of the reasons why I thought I'd love it, as per the views Byrne has expressed in her blog, she seems precisely 'my kind of people' in terms of acceptance of others. Her essay on the problematics of writing what you know (here) is brilliant and has even mildly changed the way I perceive fiction. But the way these cultural concerns are articulated was not what I expected. You see, they're expressed in the narrative of unreliable mental unstable narrators - and that is not always explicit, which may result in some people mistaking reportage with advocacy. A particular scene (you'll know which when you read it) has led to all the 1-star and no-star reviews, as people did not fully understand what the author was trying to convey. Monica Byrne has written about that scene as well (here - some spoilers) and I think the book would have benefitted from this note at the end. After all, even if there is a clear deconstruction of previous symbols towards the end of the book, that particular scene remains unaccounted for in more direct terms and, thus, seemingly forgiven. 
 One of the reasons for this is that the author seems to expect her readers to be very clever and trained in myth-deciphering. This is not the right book for someone in the need of a mere beach read, or a book to read between commutes, or a book to take for the bathroom. No. This is a book you should read for hours straight, trying to connect all the dots to reach the final communion of both narratives. 
 And it's a book unlike most. It feels like Byrne just grabbed a bunch of random concerns, symbols, novum and images and stuck them all in a magical blender. I can't wait until she finishes her next book. I keep wondering, because I'm clueless - where will she go from here?