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Title: Disappointing
Review: Like other reviewers, having enjoyed "Winter Queen" and "Leviathan", I had looked forward to reading this. But the author has lost his touch. His detective-character, Fandorin, is absent for most of the story; when he does appear it is to deliver some ponderous speech. Instead, the main character is an uninteresting young woman.About a quarter of the way into the book (I was reading it on Kindle), there is a long and confusing digression which just slows down the action. The denouement comes not in action but in other lengthy speeches.His previous works counted as literary "thrillers", but there are no thrills here. I am left wondering if Akunin was instead trying to write a historical novel about the Russo-Turkish war of the late nineteenth century. If so, it fails on that count too, being far too confusing and, in fact, uninteresting.I'm giving it two stars, but that may be generous.
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