(Something went wrong in the Kindle-to-Goodreads data transfer; ignore the weird dates on the activity. This review will probably also be a mess, because I have a lot of thoughts about this book and a lot of material to work with.)

I know a lot of people really like this book, but it just doesn't work for me. The story drags on forever - not only is it long, it's excruciatingly detailed; more on that later - and only at the climax did I realize that yes, I actually did care about whether or not Theo would get away with it. In terms of the ending, though, I felt like

Spoiler

everything was tied up too perfectly, with the painting found/returned and the reward money conveniently enough to get Theo out of the other mess he made

- which fits into the themes (whose explicit explanation and analysis makes up the last, like, 10% of the book; another point of annoyance for me considering Boris made some similar points and Theo brushed him off, only to reiterate them like his own original ideas a few pages later.)

So, regarding the details - it seemed like every other adjective was "Asian" or some iteration thereof (Chinese, Japanese, Korean specifically), and in very few (if any) of these cases was it relevant. Truth be told, I think it's just one of the more obvious symptoms of an issue I noticed throughout this novel: because Theo's view is so Ameri-centric (Eurocentric?), everything else - from non-native speakers' pronunciation to the origin of some random background object to Boris' whole character, really - stands out to him as exotic and strange, which is problematic to say the least.

And I'm not very happy with the way minor characters - particularly Boris - were treated, either. He pointed out some very valid flaws in Theo's reasoning and attitudes, only to be dismissed as ignorant and annoying, in large part because he's a "barbaric foreigner" or something; if he's intended as a foil for Theo, this greatly undermines the effectiveness of any views Boris expresses. None of the female characters had any real storyline or agency of their own, either; I get that they're secondary to Theo's storyline, but with the exception of

Spoiler

Kitsey's relationship with Cable, mainly acknowledged because it was a "betrayal" of Theo

they didn't really seem to exist or matter outside of how they affected Theo and the dilemmas he dug himself into.

tl;dr I had little patience for Theo's narrowmindedness and exoticization of all kinds of objects and characters. There are some nice examples of flowery prose, but just as many awkwardly phrased sections. None of the characters seemed dynamic or sympathetic, the narrator included, and overall I just felt the book was far too long.