Palimpset

I fell in love with this book. The writing is captivatingly poetic. The descriptions are beautiful in a surreal manor. Every object has its own personality and they are not quite what they seems to be, they are so much more. I love how the train cars are alive and have a will of their own. The city is alive and aims to please the people within it. The characters are relatable and true. They are lost souls striving for happiness, to experience something other than the norm. I find the relationship with Palimpsest is equivalent to a drug at first. It brings you to a higher state of being, you experience things that are wonderful or frightening but the trip is worth it. Some become obsessed and addicted. The real world blurs with the wonders of the other one until the other side takes over. Reality and immigration are the recurring themes in the book. What is real? Is Palimpsest the real world or is earth reality? Can it be both? But unlike a drug it really is another world, a real one you can immigrate to. Palimpsest is not a dream or a pure utopia like some believe at first. It is another world filled with war and greed and love. Everything is just amplified, more intense that earth. How it feels to be a traveler in a new strange world, you only think it is strange because of your own customs. Cassimere believes in immigration and fought the war to allow immigrants in. Our own world fights for the same reason. Many people don’t want outsiders coming into their “prefect world.”  

The entrance to this mysterious world is through another. For most sex becomes meaningless, something as easy and emotionless as hopping on a bus. One man has sex with his own sister to enter the world. (Then again one man enters the world so he can be with his hallucination of his dead sister.) But I think this ties into drug use also. After experiencing such a higher satisfying state sex can seems weak and unfulfilling in comparison. In the end they join together on earth so they can stay in Palimpsest forever, a city that is alive and loves them.