Verdict, represented by this graphical image of my level of grippedness.*
Left to right, we start off nicely and then notice the drop off and the huge darkness of plodding, plodding, and more plodding through a wasteland. Characters moaning and making really stupid immature mistakes. Yawn, yawn, yawn.
There was a brief moment there where I seriously contemplated just going to the last 50 pp, finding out the ending and calling it quits.
But I didn't. And as you see, things do pick up.
I'm glad things end the way they do.
But oy, that middle.
*Yes, yet again I trot out Red Dwarf. "Can't you tell the story is not gripping me? I'm in a state of non-grippedness, I am completely smegging ungripped." Other, more erudite homeschoolers quote Sophocles and Cervantes. I quote Red Dwarf and Jeeves & Wooster. Any day now, my name will be struck from the WTM blog list.
