The best moments are these shallow characters grasping for authenticity, such as a character that screams in public for "real" human reaction, or a guy that sells weed with leaves and seeds because it captures a nostalgic experience.

The structure of the book follows in the form of the first of these semi-related short stories that begin to weave together and interlink with a fairly incestuous cast of characters who all conveniently happen to be a niece, a childhood friend, or something else in relation to the current chapter's protagonist or of a character from Welcome to the Goon Squad. I honestly did enjoy piecing it all together and how these people connected. These chapters vary in style and form, with some of them feeling pretty gimmicky and a bit annoying, especially this tonally bizarre secret agent chapter written in second person. It feels less purposeful and more of an attempt to one-up the so wacky and cool PowerPoint chapter in the first novel. Even writing that sentence now makes me feel like I'm having an Aneurysm. The book is pretty grounded up to this point.

Unfortunately, the varying success of the journey coalesces in a pretty shit ending and very little payoff. I felt annoyed with the book refusing to spend more than a few pages on actual compelling ideas and fixating on building out this cast of characters that at most get a chapter and a half of characterization.

Also, a big cube that stores your memories is just such a mid way to frame the whole memory exploration thing. There's this concept of gaining access to other's consciousness but only if you upload your own to the cloud, and its barely explored. There's so much genre fiction out there that does these things better.

I didn't hate this book, but it can be thrown in the pile of half-baked mfa drivel quite easily. Can't blame Egan for chasing the bag though, I'm sure if you loved the first this one is enjoyable enough.