I am a huge fan of most of Ian McDonald's stuff, but unfortunately this one hit kind of flat and was a major struggle to finish.

I had a little trouble with the whole magical reality aspect of the book, for starters. It seemed incredibly present in the first section, and then largely disappeared into the background until near the end, so it felt rather jarring when it returned after so long.

Also, the whole Hopeland thing wasn't quite strongly enough envisioned for me to get a handle on it?

Honestly, this may largely be me. Like I said, I had a lot of trouble connecting to this book and the characters so I might have just drifted off and lost details that are actually obviously there.

But that's my 2¢ FWIW…