I just finished this book and would not recommend it to my book club. It was one of the slowest reads I've had in all of 2007 and unfortunately, I can't say the ending changed my opinion as can sometimes happen.

At first, I didn't care one way or another about this book ... didn't hate it, but didn't love it either. But, I found it interesting enough that I wanted to keep reading. However, by the end of the book, not only did I not care, I was bored out of my mind! The author attempted to use "period" language, but slipped up enough to be annoying. There were also many extraneous characters that could have been left out completely. Most importantly, our entire book club felt that the book should have ended shortly after the main character's escape from prison in "The Flood", once he had his revelations. From there on it was just a bore.

This was written a la Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. While I don't mind that style, it was cumbersome in a 500 page novel. It really bogged down the pace of the story. The story was OK, but it had such a neat premise, I expected more.