Not-quite-a-lawyer Walter Moody arrives in Hokitika to make his fortune in the gold fields, and becomes inadvertently embroiled in a set of mysterious circumstances seeming to involve every major player in town, but especially missing Emory Staines, dead Crosbie Wells, imprisoned Anna Wetherell and widowed Lydia Wells. Because of the interwoven nature of the plot surrounding an oddly specific amount of gold, none of the players hold all the parts and fully understand what has happened, it only becomes clearer to the reader after following each man's individual story. The characters, as far as we know, never really get the full picture.

Honestly put off reading this for a long time because the size and prestige were very daunting to me. It was in the end pretty enjoyable and comfortable to read, if at times somewhat opaque. The structure was very interesting, in that the chronological structure was built in a very unusual way, with the chronological beginning towards the middle of the book. Also, the further on, the more information was in the chapter summaries than in the actual chapter.

The beginning is the most difficult to get through in that it's fairly confusing and there are a ton of characters - all dudes - clamoring at once. The few women who do exist in this book kind of fall into stereotypes - the virtuous prostitute and the evil widow.

I guess there is some magical realism? Because of the thing with Anna and Staines, which is never really explained - a good thing, in my opinion, it leaves the mystery and opacity of the book intact. At the same time, I had a really hard time understanding the relevance of the zodiac stuff to the book at large. Honestly I'm not sure there was any. There is also a lot of implied stuff about race going on.