. . . the novel undermines expectations on practically every front.
Really, Hogan's entire novel is subversive.
The author's most fundamental subversion is in the language itself. It's true that slangy, dense, not-immediately-accessible language, packed with eyeball-kicking neologisms and non-English words, is a cyberpunk specialty. However, loan-words from a First World power like Japan don't begin to pack the seditious punch of the language of America's own disenfranchised, and Hogan doesn't stop with Spanglish.
I could go on and on, trying to capture Cortez on Jupiter in a word. Revolutionary? Gonzo? Well-written? Nahuatlfuturist? Anarchic? Recombocultural? Satirical? Cutting-edge? All are accurate (yes, even "cutting-edge," though the book was first published 25 years ago).
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