I loved the first three-quarters of this, the writing is beautiful and Powers has such a captivating way of writing about nature and our relationship with it. I felt that the plot let the book down a lot, where towards the end it felt like it dribbled to a conclusion. There were parallels in the plot with the way a tree grows and I'm sure a lot of readers would say that this is why the plot sort of spreads back out and separates, but I didn't feel that this was done tightly enough.