Title: A Dense Disappointment
Product review: I wanted to enjoy this book. The first few pages demonstrate that Mason is a more than capable writer, his sentences poetic and his tone believably 19th century. But very quickly it is apparent that this is going to be a long haul. The characterizations are flat. Dr. Carroll is a huge letdown when he finally makes his appearance (actually, he's absent most of the time even after his entrance), and Mr. Drake so quickly devotes himself to this milktoast Svengali that the reader concludes he never had a self to lose to the mysteries of Burma. The book ultimately feels like a depository for every fact about Burma that Mason was able to scrape up in his year of research there, thus he succeeds in creating a lush stage for the action but unfortunately casts his story with puppets.
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