I’ll generally give a book 50 pages to get me hooked—if I’m feeling generous, maybe even 100 pages. But if it fails the 100-page test, then it’s really not worth going on. This book falls into that category.

The book opens with a barrage of names, words, places, and religions that comes off as more bewildering than immersive. The main characters are unsympathetic, and after a while I found it impossible to really care what happened to them. Some intrigue had begun to develop by about page 75, but it just wasn’t enough. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, or for people I could care about to manifest. Possibly if one were to push through another 100 pages, this might happen—but I can’t summon the motivation. So, back it goes to the library.