Bats of the Republic

I admit to not finishing this "illuminated novel" by Zachary Thomas Dodson. It is exquisitely staged and composed--by that I mean it has combined multiple forms for presenting information--letters, maps, drawings, "transcripts," excerpted pages from other books--to tell a complex tale spanning three hundred years, from the 1880's to a futuristic America that has collapsed as an entity. Normally, I like this sort of story, and the settings are well-drawn, but I found the characters less than compelling and the story just too fragmented to make it worth the work required. Too bad, as this was written by an acquaintance of a long-time friend. A similar assessment is provided by Kirkus; however, the reviewer from the Washington Post was "transfixed" by the craft and by the parallel tales.