Cosmicomics

Read back to back, Cosmicomics wears on some readers: later entries lean harder on abstract, math-flavored premises and lighter on story, and more than a single reviewer says the book reads closer to “essays or philosophical musings than narratives.” The invented names, Qfwfq, Xlthlx, Mrs Vhd Vhd, are named as a real barrier, with one reader complaining “tiny unicorns called Gzz and Tjsdfh might live up my arse.” The human relationships read dated too, the narrator's interest in women framed around claiming rather than anything equal. A critic notes the nonhuman cast can “keep you at arms length from the characters and world,” and one blunt reader dismisses the whole book as “a weird galactic Grimms Fairy Tales type of book.”