reading this year has been slim pickings, i started a lot of books i had to finish but regretted starting. my pile of books to give away / sell down the market is growing larger, and i'm feeling a general disappointment in the quality and type of story telling i seem to enjoy and then along came, steve's new book.

it's a novella, and it's a companion piece to the album although can be read independently.
i guess the book kinda pieces the album together in a way that gives it a linear structure and assessable coherency as a concept album. 
i guess the first thing that hooked me was the style, it's written as a fast paced kinetic adventure / mystery but you can hear steve's voice reading it. you can follow his flow, pick up on the nuances and humour, the way characters reflect reality, the pace, the timing and the little deviations he makes. it's a rock and roll novel, sex, drugs and gigs, interpersonal relationships, and writers block. 

a famous respected but fading rock star eros zeta addicted to a drug that is getting him nowhere creatively, a relationship that just reenforces the drug habit and a lack of inspiration, eros hears about the strange device known as the hypnogogue that offers to pull great art from artists while they dream, a device that is part spiritual, part machine, part organic, part technological, part extra dimensional, possibly alien or maybe a mixture of all. 
this is the science fiction element which resonates with me, i love sci fi and it's very rare to find a novel that can capture science fiction well and in an authentic way, true to what the ethos of science fiction is and should be.
this managed to do that. it took two days to read but at a slow loving pace, i really soaked up the atmospheres and the descriptions. it's not convoluted or high brow, just a great story, well written with a poetic layer that steve excels at in all his art.
book of the year by a mile! 

genuinely, i have not read anything this year as good.

my only criticism is it should have been longer, i didn't want it to end.