A book with excellent sweep and storytelling panache. Also, in its final chapters, a potential companion volume for Learning to Die in the Anthropocene. I enjoy fantasy novels that soft-pedal their fantastic elements, and Mitchell barely lets you know what's going on until the book is two-thirds done. Mitchell works very hard, here and in Cloud Atlas, to break out of the standard novel format where three characters take turns in alternating chapters, and he's very successful.