Rather appropriately, I read this book whilst sitting in waiting rooms and flying to Kraków. It is not a normal novel. The plot, such as it is, is not very linear, there are chapters unrelated to the rest of the book (at least in terms of continuity) and we discover little about many of the characters. Netherlands, it does hang together, it does make you think and at least part of it seems to have been written specially for a biologist like myself. And I loved the maps.