XX: A Novel, Graphic

I've been a fan of Hughes' comic book work for years, but when this breeze block of a book turned up I felt sure he'd overstretched himself. XX is a hugely ambitious work that explores visual and written communication. It could have been exhausting, but as well as a riot of typography, graphics, subplots and digressions there is a bloody good story - it all makes sense. You have to read it.

The product is exactly as described. It has cover, pages, words, pictures, the works! It offers unlimited reads. Bonus feature, it can be used to induce sleep, beats my sleeping pills. Don’t understand most things but this one I own. Best purchase ever

A book is 2 things- it Is the sum of a lot of hard work by an author , and it is a material object.n this case , the work is great , fun , full of in jokes and is both original and entertaining , a genuine work of art.The container fails however, as the book is so thick the binding has failed in several places in my copy ( a hardback) The most irritating thing is that I know how to treat new books to avoid problems , but happened anyway.So, 5 stars for the author, 3 for the publisher, and 10 stars for the irony ( can't say why this is ironic, would spoil your fun early on.)

Loved this novel. Mind expanding. Gripping. Great characters both real and digital. If hard sci-fi is your thing then you will enjoy this.

I can see why this is regarded as a tour-de-force of graphic-augmented sci-fi; the design is tremendous and there are some truly brilliant ideas in it - particularly the notion of an alien life-force existing purely in the realm of ideas.At a literary level however, the novel fails. The writing style is flat, the characters, paper-thin, the contemporary environments dull. The graphic inventiveness soon gets in the way of the story and I found trudging through pages of a pastiche 50s sci-fi magazine tedious and, despite being truly intrigued by many of the ideas, I gave up after reading 400 of its 1000 pages.

Extraordinary. Read it asap

Most importantly, I now feel I have been limbering up for this massive book since I started writing my own stuff as well as writing gestalt real-time reviewing about others’ books .The detailed gestalt real-time review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.Above is one of its conclusions.

No review will ever be enough. Just read it. A key to the ideas of life itself and a tour-de-force of imagination and creativity.

Beginning with three main characters in the small office of a tech startup and ending (continuing, actually) with the collapse and rebirth of the universe, this novel will take you on a journey like no other. Rain Hughes’s use of typography and graphics is brilliantly original (if hard and occasionally impossible to read when the font is very small on the Kindle app on my iPad, even when I zoom in), and his imagination is cosmic. This is a masterpiece that should stand tall in the annals of science fiction for a very long time—and publishers, you can quote me on that (though I’m a nobody).

This is a gem of a book. Oddly, considering some of the themes, it is a bit frustrating to read in e form. Some of the pages are scanned and the resolution is not good enough to make a zoom legible. There's a lot of fun things done with text in a visual sense. Tonnes (or should that be tones) of neat ideas wrapped in an entertaining LOL book.

Comme si Douglas Coupland essayait d'écrire un bouquin de Greg Egan dans InDesign.Je n'ai pas aimé :* Une partie des gimmicks typographiques superflus (limite Damasio) ou pire, illisibles.* Les quelques grandes improbabilités techniques ou scientifiques.* Le tiers central du bouquin qui manque de rythme.* Un peu trop de stéréotypes chez les personnages.J'ai aimé :* La dimension hypertexte et hypermedia plutôt réussie (la narration est mêlée et étayée d'extraits de journaux, rapports, pages de wiki, et une novelette SF kitsch).* Bon niveau de "sense of wonder".* L'humour et quelques belles punchlines.

Der Inhalt des Buches wird in einer innovativen Optik präsentiert. Diese Form der Darstellung macht es auch zu einem an Seiten sehr umfangreichen Buch. Die dahinterliegende Story entwickelt sich für mich viel zu langsam und zäh.

The book is quite good. It has a loads of artwork and wacky fonts mixed with articles, reports and stories within the story. It is best experienced in print to read them up-close.The hardcover edition however has loose binding and poor quality of paper, warping at every page. I would have kept it if not for the torn pages inside it. It is worth taking a risk at this price.