As I was reading this book, I found myself thinking about how many stars I would give it, and it kept changing the longer I read. Early on, I had the book at three stars: it was painfully slow in the beginning, and I'm not a fan of so much description of the surroundings, even when well written (as it was.) Then it inched up to four stars -- the characters grew on me, and I do tend to like interpersonal family sagas, even when not much happens plot-wise. Then, bam! It was at five stars when the plot went from plodding to rocketing. There's a scene at the middle of the book that was so unexpected and so well-written I caught myself literally doing the hold-your-breath thing you do in movies. Alas, it fell back to four stars by the end of the book -- there were some parts of the ending that I thought were way too far-fetched and silly, and others that seemed almost mechanical in their need to wrap up what had been quite a well-crafted and tentacled plot. This seems like a book that a lot of different people with varying reading tastes could enjoy, so unless you can't handle any level of physical violence (there are some gory parts) I could probably recommend it to you.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.