Personal confession: I am extremely prone to obsession and fear over the subject of disease and widespread plague so many aspects of this book were supremely disturbing for me. I probably should have given up on it earlier, especially since I wasn’t completely in love with the book. Generally speaking, while the author did a fantastic job of creating this dark future in a comprehensive and believable manner, it lacked the beautiful language of a book like Gormenghast. Thus, combined with the relatively slow pace, it was not anything I loved.

With that said, I decided not to dwell further upon my time with the book for my own sanity, and so I will leave the critique at this, and do no synopsis.