Leo Robson in the New Statesman review describes the book as "full of familiar delights and familiar tedium", with "Protracted descriptions of a pageant and a seance drain the reader's will to live." It continues "After a certain point, most sentences go something like this (not a parody): "Everything seems connected: disparate locations twitch and burst into activity like limbs reacting to impulses sent from elsewhere in the body, booms and jibs obeying levers at the far end of a complex set of ropes and cogs and relays.""