Title: Gruesome and unrewarding
Review: ...The book has a number of problems in my view. The characters are 2-dimensional and the dialogue is stiff. Vel is NOT a sympathetic character. I admit that I could not find a sympathetic character in the entire book. The vision of the book is very dark. The level of bloodshed is stunning and could only appear reasonable if you spend most of your time playing action computer games. Others have praised the book for its ideas. I was not impressed with the author's creativity--William Blake as dictator for life is all well and good, but I did not find it convincing and Pol Pot's ideas are not uplifting. There are mysterious aliens in the book, but a well-executed plot would have been better. Wading through the text was a gruesome ordeal, and my effort was rewarded by the discovery that this book is the first in a series...
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