Oops. I so much wanted to love this. But this sprawling family saga sprawls so far and wide that it's nearly impossible to keep track of who's who, how they're related to each other, and why they do what they do. I was desperate for at least a family tree, or a cast of characters, but there was no help to be found.
There were also descriptions, ideas, and whole paragraphs that struck me as way-too-familiar. Either I'd seen them earlier in the book, or remembered them from Power of the Dog--a disconcerting deja vu. Plus, there were sudden shifts in time, place, and speaker that just ... happened ... from one sentence to the next, with no speaker tag, paragraph break, or segue. Even the two most important characters, The Sheep Queen (Emma) and her daughter Elizabeth, seemed hard to distinguish from each other, which further muddied the central mystery: who, if anyone, gave up her infant daughter for adoption?
Savage can write, no doubt about it. And I think I get what he was intending to do, and partially accomplished at the end. But the book was a slog to get through and I almost gave up several times in frustration.
With some better editing, this book could've been great. As it is, it feels like a rough draft--a messy pool of scenes and people and events not yet honed into a work of art.
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