After reading this story, I can say with certainty, I'm glad it's over. While I did understand the intent of the author's messages in this story, I feel that the "madness" of the disease lasted about 100 pages too long. I felt almost as though I was in an "Alice in Wonderland" type story with all this random imagery (garden gnomes, punk rock angels, fire giants, feathers, video-game obsessed dwarfs, etc.), that can't be linked together. I found myself constantly trying to make sense and search for symbolism of various objects and characters. Often times, I couldn't make sense of any of it. I guess that's what the author was trying to portray with the onset of this disease. I also watched the book trailer and the author was dressed up on a cow costume wandering the streets of New York City, rambling on about "creating even as [she] pees". Needless to say, she was a little out there, so I can understand the orgin of the plot.
All in all, I believe the main character, Cameron, was trying to search for the meaning of his existance. He was also on a quest to find out exactly who he was before he died. He hadn't had time to experience most of the finest things life had to offer, and he was trying to live it out in his dreams before he died. Another major theme I found in this book was happiness. The author explored what it means to be happy and why we have to experience the bad times in order to appreciate the happy ones. Cameron used drugs to escape any feeling at all in the beginning, and to avoid feeling depressed or happy. Toward the end, the things that he thought would make him happy really did not. He did, however, find happiness, but it wasn't what he'd expected.
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