Opened with excitement - NEW PYNCHON! - slogged through the first hundred pages feeling as though I was reading someone trying to write like Pynchon without any of the joyous perplexity and thrill of being lost in his worlds. Considered putting it down, thinking that maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind, visions of Cormac McCarthy's last being a slog and hoping this wouldn't be Pynchon's last fictional offering though time is a cruel mistress but, by triple digit page numbers, the story started moving, the characters started clicking and it felt like Pynchon. Lesser Pynchon, certainly, but his brain was there. And so was mine. Hoping it holds for the rest of it (another hundred pages or so). Not recommended for anyone wanting to give Pynchon a first go: guaranteed you won't get the appeal. I've read everything he's written and I barely made it to solid footing here.