Anyone that talked to me about this book while I was reading it will probably be surprised to hear how much I liked it. I complained a lot about the middle of this book, and even put it down long enough to finish two other books before making myself give it another try before returning it to the library. I stand by my dislike of the middle of this book, it dragged and focused too much on stuff I didn't care about, but by the end of the book it actually all made sense and was important. I think the issue is mainly that I wanted the book to be about something different than it was actually about. And part of that is that it *does* set up to be about one thing and then shift. But what it ended up being was beautiful in its own way, even if some of the most interesting things promised at the beginning were disregarded for a lot of stuff I struggled to care about. Obviously I'm still kind of torn about it.