Taibo does not write--he rampages, making life difficult for any reader seeking smooth, creamy fiction. His half digested, gristle-filled pages jump time, logic and linearity, inducting you into a latin, he-man, mad-man book. Forget Márquez’ realism magico. Think speed-driven, nightmare real.

No namby-pamby bedside manner from Taibo. You work. He labored for you over his crazed connections, so you must knit his jagged cuts of history, surgery, crime, and sex with a seven footer into a story. Taibo does nothing for you, until the end.

There he does land his strange creature of a book with the wings on and other body parts mostly intact while his surrogate writer hero drifts off into happy endings and a call to buy an earlier book. Go read it and wonder why the book has not done better. It should have.
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I couldn't get through more than about 60 pages of this. ( )