This book is very well written. It has great suspense, great characterization and has a good mystery in it.

An author choose the settings for his or her stories and also the tactical elements of the stories, what makes them tick and what to emphasize.

There is lots of violence in the book and quite some truly gory, detailed torture. The reason, or excuse for the detail is assumed to make the reader emphasize with the protagonists and the hard climate they live in. But still. Gah.

But after plodding through most of the (quite good) story, there's roadblock after roadblock of gory scenes with lots of detail which the author has chosen to put there and to describe vividly.

[SPOILER]

Finally after a scene where the female protagonist has sex with the male, she realizes that she really likes to have suffocation-sex, and that's where I put the book down.

This book could have been written differently and with more discrete means and method. The author expressedly chose not to do so.