About a quarter of the way through the book I’m finding this to be a great mix of Snow Crash-type characters in a world that would give Philip Dick a run for his money, with hints of Oryx and Crake and Against the Day. My intent is not deny Boudinot’s originality – it’s to get you to read the book.
At the NY Times: All Sorts of Strange Stuff Happens When You Destroy the World: Ryan Boudinot’s Novel ‘Blueprints of the Afterlife’, by JOHN SCHWARTZ
This novel is, in a word, freaky. Woo-jin, the dishwasher, finds a young woman’s body. It is taken away by the police, and he finds it again. But the first body is still in the morgue.
The dead woman, Abby Fogg, turns up yet again, alive this time. She is, as it happens, in “superposition.” This quantum physics term describes a particle, like an electron, that can exist in multiple states, the foundation of the dead-and-not-dead possibilities described in the parable of Schrödinger’s cat. She is Abby, but not- Abby as well; she is Schrödinger’s hipster. In this world people can be reprogrammed, their brains and lives hacked and played. They can receive messages from the future and from that giant head in the sky, and reality itself gets remixed. “A+B=C is not the way to go here,” one character explains.
So duct-tape yourself to the front of this roller coaster and enjoy the ride.
The Finch and Pea 