Title: Good writing, occasionally great
Product review: This book took about a hundred pages to hook me. That seemed like a long time. But I'm 250 pages in now, and can't put it down. The writing has just enough chess specifics to interest me, a little too much ancient history for my taste, but not so much that I can't get through it. And just when I think the author is going to stumble, he comes up with a few sentences like these, describing the New York Open (page 220, paperback edition):"The ballroom was loosely ornate. The carpet attempted a hybrid of fashion and fire codes, and a grand piano had been rolled off into a corner as punishment for irrelevance. A complex of chandeliers shed off the kind of diffuse incandescence that might equip a high volume morgue."
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