This is a very information-dense book.
Ms Jensen seems to expect you to be able to keep track of all the rather esoteric information. As a rule, I'm able to do that, but this was a big book, and the book was slow, as Ms Jensen doesn't seem to know how do give the reader information without chunks and chunks of exposition.
To be fair, she did the worldbuilding for the scifi part of it well, and it was well-plotted. On top of that, she is no doubt a better writer than Dan Brown.
But it was hard to feel anything at all, even hate, for the characters, and that was the final straw for me. We won't even get into the rushed ending, rushed because the book is close to five hundred pages in trade paperback size with tiny font and the publisher probably wanted to cut it short.
I’d always thought that Jensen’s better at scripting computer adventure games than writing novels. I love, love, LOVE her GABRIEL KNIGHT universe [Sins of the Fathers, The Beast Within, and I can't remember the title of the third one ... Blood Damned?]. She’s legendary in computing game world, but not so much in literature, I suppose. A bit like TV scriptwriter Mark Frost for and novels [which are pretty bad].
I suspect she didn’t shake off her habit of cramming info in her story as much as possible because it’s required in computer adventure games.
I didn’t know that she had started out scripting games. It certainly explains why she writes the way she does.
I’m not quite sure how she got onto my wish list either.
I don’t think the time I spent reading the book was wasted, because I’ve read a lot more guy fiction books that aspire to be half as good as Jensen and don’t succeed. I just wouldn’t pick up any other books by her.