A squandered premise, I thought. Way too many pages spent on stuff extraneous to the plot, like the workings of the ships and whatnot. I was super disappointed that the mystery of who M and Joe were was apparent very early (or I guessed lucky? How to tell). Kite's personality seemed all over the place. Erratic, but we're supposed to like him? I didn't, even before he

Spoiler

killed the boy just to avoid having to reveal who Joe was

. Aside from too much internal fluff, the book didn't even end when it should: the denouement was completely superfluous and generally turned me even more off the story. And

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I think Joe changed to being Chinese at the end. For some reason.

I did like the tortoises. And appreciate the cleverness of what was done with the tortoises. But not what was done with the tortoises.