Ploddingly slow in places, somewhat diverting in others. The story gets oddish, and there's one surprising twist.

I thought the same thing, but I'd chalked it up to having too many voices telling the story.

There were parts of it that I either missed as I was reading (which is possible, as my interest lagged here and there), or else the timeline of the story was disjointed enough to leave questions as to how

some things occurred.

Yeah, I think so, too.