She had no legacy, a son she hadn’t seen in two years, no business to pass on, and no life’s work she had created that would continue to exist after she was gone. Like Murakami, Brian Eno, or David Lynch, Jonathan Carroll is entirely sui generis, someone whose work is so fresh, weird, and original, it stands in a class of its own.

The message on its giant sign was akin to a street beggar’s handwritten sign asking the world for help. Each life has positives and negatives and he can go back and forth between them but ultimately has to choose one. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. However, with its use of time travel, parallel lives, and magical tattoos, it is certainly also urban fantasy.

Note: While I am reviewing this novel independently and honestly, it should be noted that it has been provided to me by Melville House for the purpose of this review. I'm a huge Jonathan Carroll fan—The Wooden Sea is one of my favorite books and for awhile I spent so much time tracking down out of print copies of his books, haha.

This book was a little weird and surprising, and I was always interested to see where Graham's story (or stories) was/were going to go.

The life of “Graham 2” seems ideal, until it takes first a dangerous, then a tragic, and finally a farcical turn. What I should probably say is that any criticism I have for Carroll’s work probably says more about me than it does about him. Then, the protagonist interacts with others who received the same magical tattoo yet chose not even to check out the choice it opened to them — not curious enough to even briefly sample their alternatives. The whole book isn’t filled with magic, Graham gets peeks at different lives but those lives are normal lives without magical aspects.