The author of this book is clearly very intelligent. He frequently uses complex words and his descriptions are heavily laden. I felt that I would have gotten a lot more out of the book if I had a better background in Russian history. However, it did spark something of an interest in that for me, so I guess that's something. The narrative is clever, but slow and steady. There is no real high excitement in the book until you near the end. Unfortunately, I felt that this wasn't exploited to its fullest potential and the ending was weak. There was a great setup to the events that occurred, but a relatively poor execution that made it seem as if the author simply tired of writing the tale. I was left mildly disappointed.