Reading this novel, to me at least, is like reading a modern beat novel. To encourage people to read the government drugged the books and now readers are in comas. There's an unaliving epidemic of the best and brightest students. What's real, what is a drug induced coma dream? The book jumps around realities a lot but that is kind of the point of shock induction, shocking your system to put you into a different state of hypnosis and that exactly what this book does, shifting realities. If you like this author or beat novels I highly recommend this.