This, a father's day present to me from no. 1 son, has held me enthralled from the moment I picked it up. It's a brilliant story with all sorts of world-building subplots built in. In fact, it started off at such a pace that I thought, 'He's going to run out of new things to write about by half way through.' Not so. There's something happening almost every page, some new twist to the reality so vividly portrayed in the story. The characters are great; the plot satisfying complex without ever being out of reach. I only have two minor peeves.
  Minor peeve 1: the place and people names have a...um... Russian or at least Eastern European feel to them. I've seen this before, in other books, and I don't understand why authors feel the need to do this. Still, it's not important.
   Minor peeve 2: something I've picked up in other books... everything ties up, if anything, too neatly. Everything that gets a mention turns out to be important in one way or the other. In films this is fair enough - not enough time to equivocate - but in books that purport to show a reality, there's no need for this. In 'real life' things don't, usually, all tie up.
  Minor rant over. This is a great book, one of the best I've read for quite a while.