Florid prose and a large cast of well-rounded characters with an interplay of politics, politicking, ethics and romance that just doesn’t quite hit the spot for me, in the end. I mean I enjoyed it, it is by any account quite good, but it ultimately didn’t leave me with much. I think maybe a great book leaves me a bit discombobulated, a cartoon character with birds flying around my head or something, leaves me dwelling on the characters and plot or, in the best cases, leaves me dwelling on reality and my position within it. For a 700 page tome, for something making the wikipedia page on the history of the novel, I had higher hopes for this. For 700 pages really it should just be great, shouldn’t it? Kind of reminds me of Tolstoy, an intricately constructed interconnected weave of characters giving weight to an emotional situation that slightly misses the mark when it comes to emotional resonance…meaning I suppose that if this does hit the mark for emotional resonance for you, I can imagine it being an incredibly fulfilling novel.

There are sparks and burbles, events and dialogs that run quite well, humor that still holds and tragedy that still tears. Maybe I feel it a bit trite or a bit mawkish. Or maybe it is just not quite for me.