Echopraxia

"Echopraxia" is a difficult book to finish. Set in a future similar to our world today but made so much different by a few changes that have occurred in the interim, a reader is often left wondering as to the significance or even the meaning of surface plot elements. Explanations do come but are generally incomplete, leaving the reader to wonder about many things. Even so, there is a deeply significant message to the story, as well as one sudden, dramatic plot moment that stands out to me as exceptional even long after I had finished the story. There are questions here about faith, science, and the very idea of settled knowledge when all testing is necessarily incomplete in a universe vast beyond comprehension. I did not like "Echopraxia" as much as I liked Vandermeer's "Annihilation" trilogy, but it carries some of the same weight and profound insight, and I do recommend this book.