 Tom Shone , writing for The Sunday Times , praised the novel for its atypical qualities for Ellis , " known for his orgies of violence " . Shone asks " Why is a new sequel to Less Than Zero ... so moving ? " , noting the presence of " feelings " in the novel to be starkly different from Ellis ' usual style . Touching on its personal qualities , Shone notes " If Lunar Park <unk> the atrocities of American Psycho back to their source , Imperial Bedrooms pulls the thread further and reaches Less Than Zero " . The emotive energy in the new book is traced back to the last pages of Lunar Park as well ; fellow writer Jay McInerney observes that " The last few pages of [ Lunar Park ] are among the most moving passages I know in recent American fiction [ because ] ... Bret was coming to terms with his relationship with his father in that book . " Vice observes that the " final passages in both Imperial Bedrooms and Lunar Park pack a lot of emotional impact . " San Francisco Chronicle hails Imperial Bedrooms as " the very definition of <unk> meta : Ellis is either so deeply enmeshed in his own creepy little insular world that he can 't write his way out of it , or else he is such a genius that he 's created an entire parallel universe that folds and unfolds on itself like some kind of Escher print . " 
