Watts has this way of threading 3-4 different core themes through an exciting narrative, and unlike a more conventional novel, he doesn’t really try to make them all relate explicitly; the result in Starfish is dense and difficult, but leavened with exciting plot and compelling, tragic characters, and absolutely mesmerizing.
This historical treatise has a lot of notoriety but I found it unnecessarily dense, and ultimately flawed, in that its focus on states and state power ignores a related discussion of capitalist power, such that altho there is a useful perspective to glean here about how a drive for social legibility can transform a society, I wouldn't recommend the book overall.
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