This book is what it purports to be. Mason has internalized Odysseus and has drawn lovely bits that could well be fragments of Homer in a gorgeously Hellenized English. Some parts are made up out of whole cloth, others are variations on scenes from the original and others exist is a kind of dream state. Be this what it may, Mason, a computer scientist and classist, has his audience reading, thinking and dreaming as though they were one with the world Odysseus inhabited. This a magical novel that will have going back to Homer or perhaps even picking up a little Greek.