THIS STORY ISN'T THE END OF THIS INTERMINABLE MESS? UGH! The writing favors form over substance, and while I don't mind flowery writing if there isn't anything to back up the beauty it becomes a horrible mess. And that is the best word to describe this book, a mess. It's jumpy and uncoordinated. The huge cast of characters feels extremely unnecessary. And for every single possible plot development we had to find out exactly what every single character thought about it. It's just tedious. This could very easily have been cut down by half, and I would argue down to a quarter of it's length. That the story is not only this long, but has a sequel (and possibly more beyond that) just boggles my brain.
