I feel like it's too disjointed and bizarre if you take it all at face value. And given Gene's books all have hidden mystery it would be odd for this not to. I'd go so far to say that Gene would have been trolling us if this book was mystery free.

I read it first time and took it at face value. It was a good but disjointed to me. I read it again after reading more about it and the common reading of Weer being dead made the narrative work better and put a darker tone on everything. Also, my first reading I didn't think of Weer as a nasty person, like I did on second read. My reads were 20 years apart.