Liminal States
(Starred  Review) SomethingAwful.com editor Parsons (My Tank Is Fight!) whips up  an awe-inspiring, helter-skelter journey through mind-blowing SF,  western dime novel, noir mystery, and near-future dystopian horror that  somehow manages to become a cohesive, thought-provoking whole. Gideon  Long is a brutal and brutalized man who is in the process of getting  himself shot in 1874 when he stumbles onto a pool that will create a  copy of him every time he dies. Warren Groves, husband of Long’s lover  Annie, becomes Long’s unwilling partner in resurrection, and the two  have an uneasy history down the years. In the 1950s, Warren meets a  woman who looks just like Annie, and events begin spinning out of  control as the mysterious pool turns out to have its own agenda. There’s  no way a novel with this many moving parts should hold together, but it  does, and even readers initially daunted by the jumble will soon be  glad to go wherever Parsons takes them. (Apr.)