I've never written an Amazon review before but feel I have to weigh in on this book. It's the most annoying book I've read in a long time. I stayed with it the whole way, expecting that it had to get better to live up to the hype I'd heard. But the ending is completely unsatisfying. The novel is poorly constructed, the characters lack true characterization, the whole effort comes across as the author's attempt to show off. This is an unsatisfying, overwritten, irritating novel.