86: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, by Robert Charles Wilson (2009 hardcover)

I chose this book based on Amazon's recommendation and the fact that both Cory Doctorow and Stephen King provided blurbs for the jacket.  King said, "Robert Charles Wilson is a hell of a storyteller," and since I think King is quite the storyteller himself, I thought this was pretty high praise.  The book turned out compelling enough to keep me going through 400+ pages of small font (My perspective has been skewed by all the TeenLit I read these days.), but it's a hard book to describe in many ways.

Mainly the problem of describing the novel arises in assigning it a genre. Wilson is considered a SciFi author, and I suppose that loosely fits things--but very loosely. The story is set in a futuristic 22nd-Century America, but one that looks much more like things did in the 18th century. There are scattered pockets of technology, but on the whole it's much more of a feudal society, with landowners and serfs, a mixed civil and religious political structure with military leanings. There's a constant war that is being waged to maintain the American borders--and a corresponding flag of 13 stripes and 60 stars. It's low tech enough to keep it out of the Steampunk genre, yet there's a flavor of something futuristic at the same time--in a collapse type of way common to Post-Apocalyptic novels, but well after any horror has dissipated.

With all that aside, the novel is primarily a story of friendship--between a lower-born aspiring author (the book's narrator) and the aristocratic son of the slain US President. The two travel across country, engage in numerous battle scenes, make critiques of high society and religion, and comment on socialism and totalitarianism. All in all there is a bit of something in here for everyone, and while I think that it's a more male-oriented plot, there is enough drama and interest to pull most readers along.