I was a fan of Swamplandia, and was really excited that finally Russell had another book. This did not scratch the itch for me.

There are a lot of things going on in this story, and it gets really overwhelming really quickly. I never found a "groove" where I cared about …more this story, the characters or really anything about this book.

The jumping around between five characters got exhausting and never let me feel any of their stories were adequately told. The magical elements were not well explored, and didn't jive with the historical elements of the story. It all felt very disjointed and confusing.

I can see glimmers of a good story here, but all put together this narrative doesn't make sense to me and I did not enjoy it (less)