This was really slow going for me. It's a mostly descriptive novel, with some of the LONGEST sentences I've ever read. I don't consider myself to be easily confused, but so very many would start with the usual subject and verb, then would veer off with some completely unnecessary non sequitur about said subject and I'd completely forget the original point. I'd scroll ahead to see how many pages I'd have left in a chapter and be faced with so very little dialogue/quotation marks. I was glad to get more insight into Chechnya, but it's kind of an exhausting (and of course, terribly sad) read. It reminded me of Cutting for Stone in some respects (main characters in the medical field, a country in turmoil), but this went so much slower - even though it's hundreds of pages shorter.