I have very mixed feelings about this book. I read, and enjoyed, all of the preceding volumes of this series several years ago. I enjoyed this one, too, but with reservations. The plot is very convoluted. It all comes together in the end, but as it was unfolding there were a couple of points where it felt like it veered inexplicably. Something that I believe is true of the whole series, but for some reason really came to the fore in this one, for me, is the fact that every character talks a bit like Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story, or William Powell in My Man Godfrey. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—those are two of my favorite actors, and two of my favorite movies—but it does seem a tad odd for everyone in a novel written and set in the 1990s to sound like posh characters in 1930s films. What I did enjoy every bit as much in this installment as in all the rest was the social and political commentary. It is a peculiar book, but not a bad one.