For such a polarizing book in some corners of the Internet, I didn’t expect it to be so middle-of-the-road for me. I think it excelled at granular interactions between people, giving genuinely interesting context to their thoughts, feelings, and actions. But in contrast to plot beats that communicate that there was very little sense to many things that occurred during the troubles, it didn’t feel like it had all that much to actually say. Especially for those who have read books on that time period and other novels set during it.

I’m not sure how much the verisimilitude helped, for me. On one hand, it glowed when minute exchanges were elucidated, on the other, every single thing that happens is predictable. The tone doesn’t ever change. The characters feel either overexposed and compelling, or at arms length in service to the beats you know are coming, making it hard to get attached to anything, and ultimately I think it will make for a fairly forgettable, but serviceable read.