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Hard to put down. I was deep into plot and characters. The story is absurd, but that was what I needed.

As a fan of dystopia and speculative hard sci-fi, it was great to have a lighthearted read like this. I like history, but am not a history nerd. I thought Shakespeare was fine as a student, and I am an English professor, but I am not at all a Shakespeare nerd. History and Shakespeare are two main themes here and it didn't bother me one bit to learn some interesting tidbits along the way.

Sure, I wouldn't have read the first book in the series had Neal Stephenson not been the coauthor. I admit that. I am certainly glad that the story continued on here.

Hope to read another absurd story in this series someday.

Read book 1 and loved it. So far loving this one too. Having way too many ideas for DEDEs though. Like, go back just a few years and make it so nobody could ever screenshot anything. Imagine that. Like, just casually push software designers to not invent the feature, and then go back and create some sort of patent for the idea. Not for money. Just so I could create a funny name for it. And, of course, to prevent the undetermined amount of CO2 and bandwidth used so people can share private conversations with eachother.

Starting reading this little gem to my son. Only takes about 7 pages to knock him out.

This is not the story of the movie. I don't know how they pulled the movie (The Iron Giant) from this story. Inspired by and based on are very flexible terms.

Anyway, we are literal pages from the conclusion. Excellent little story for children. Although, if you are reading it to a child who has heard of the Marvel character, I recommend referring to the character in the book using the name from the film, because explaining that Iron Man and the The Iron Man are not the same, and then explaining that Iron Man is just a guy in a suit? Not as much fun as reading this short story.

What began as a story similar to others that I have read quickly transformed into an interesting read. As usual, Crouch's timing and pacing is great, as is the character development. I would have liked it to have been a little longer.

Overall, I prefer some of Crouch's other works.

Like the first book in the series, I had a good laugh and paused to think a few times. An excellent novella for a warm summer night that offers a peculiar perspective on some of our real world problems.