What a journey!! 

I think your experience of this book will greatly vary on either  your experience with other David Mitchell books, or interest in the historical topics covered. I absolutely love how different this was to other Mitchell books, but the topic was not one I'd usually reach for which at times made it very difficult to follow! 

The nest of different stories within was so interesting and kept the story flowing nicely if one part wasn't as interesting to me. 

Overall, an incredible journey where I learned so much about Dutch-Japanese trading and the history of such a specific time! 

Mitchell's books are a giant cobweb of a world, with one in particular  (struggling to spoiler tag on my phone!) having a strong link to this one. This has lead me to wonder if I would have enjoyed this more or less if I had read that specific book after this one!  I think for me personally, it was great to see where the story ended and then go back to its beginning (similar to how I felt reading the bone clocks and then utopia avenue) - filling in the additional context I knew made some parts, characters, far more interesting (and some parts incredibly darker). But, I can't imagine what it would have been like to read this book when it came out and learn further context years down the line! 

The Thing I was not expecting was the grey morality of Jacobs character - I was rather expecting him to be quite the hero, but this is at its heart a story about capitalism. Mitchell does not shy away from this and he does not expect you to fully respect his actions. The gritty side of this time and place are not fantasised, and there are no illusions - Marinus being strategically placed as a representative of a more ethical way of living was a very intelligent choice, and one that the book hugely benefitted from.