illegible_scribble
2/1/2015
Finally, a much-hyped novel which actually delivers the payoff
For a long while, I was loving pretty much every novel I read (most of which were past Hugo nominees or highly-touted new releases). Then I hit a long dry spell of much-hyped novels which had a great deal of promise, then went from 8 or 9 stars to 7 stars or 6 or even less, in the last 50 pages.
This novel broke that trend. Not only does it provide insight into cultures unknown to me, it contains enough human common ground to really speak to me -- and the ending is actually an ending, rather than an "Oh, shit, the publisher is demanding that I send this off to them now" fizzling denouement.
If you're debating about which novel of Middle-Eastern/Eastern cultures to read, this is definitely one of them.