Nerddom and dorkitude have become mainstream. This, a masterful first novel, draws the connections between geekery and superstition, the intersections of family curses and comic book worlds. The neo spirituality of the internet era. A wikipedia worth of footnotes, combined with Diaz's distinct voice (and I mean that--- the book reads like he speaks), this book is a harbinger of a new fiction, a scifi of color (distinct from that of authors like Octavia Butler), a people's storytelling that combines the newly-almost-okness of being obsessed with some nerdery or other and the life of us, people of color at the intersection of our diasporas and the shrinking of the world into just one corner of an internet age.

But it is not just the way the story is told. The story itself, the antihero who is really a Hero, who, for all of us who were outcasts or nerds growing up, represents the person We Could Have Become. If things went a little different. Diaz nails it.

Verdict: Recommended.