Chapter One Hundred Forty-Four: The Steady Running of the Hour

I have mixed feelings about this novel by Justin Go.  I finished reading it last night, and I didn't love the ending then, and I don't love it now.  It made the whole novel feel kind of pointless to me, though I won't say more in case any of you are planning on reading it.  As for the rest of the novel, it had its highs and lows.  The vivid descriptions of life in the trenches in WWI were a bit more than I had bargained for, but what bothered me the most was the rather strange choice to narrate the story--both the parts happening in the present and in the past--using the present tense.  I found this rather disconcerting, and occasionally the narrative would slip into the past tense for reasons that were unclear to me, which in turn was mildly distracting.  I didn't love the characters, nor did I even really dislike them: they were just sort of there, not making me care about them, so I didn't feel particularly invested in the outcome of the story.  It was really the plot that kept the story going--it's a fairly fast-paced adventure, at least in the thread of the plot that happens in the present day, taking the main character all over Europe on a frantic search for information that would enable him to claim a large inheritance, if he can find the information in time.  I guess on the whole, I would say, read it if you want a story that's mostly predicated on the plot, rather than the likability of the characters, but it wasn't one of my favorites.