I wasn’t sure I was going to like this much for the first 50 pages or so, which is my usual cut off. But thankfully interesting things start to happen shortly afterward. The initial setup is so standard I was worried it wouldn’t go anywhere, but the more you read the more it diverges and the more interesting it becomes.

While I wouldn’t say it’s thematically strong, it does a good job of managing expectations and then subtly subverting them, even so far as the pacing. When stuff starts happening it really does start clipping along nicely. I liked it more as it went on. I thought about wether I’d have liked it this much if the beginning was a bit slower and a standard affair, and I don’t think I would have, actually; which is a pretty clever way to structure your novel, as long as readers stick with it, anyway.