I had a very hard time getting into this. The story is told like a history, which didn't appeal to me. The characters are all very interesting and there are a few that I got behind, but the focus is mostly on Raphael's Son and his mother through most of it and they're such unpleasant people to read about. The humor was uneven, relying mostly on a sardonic irony that didn't always work for me and sometimes was absent or felt out of place during the darkest parts of the real-life history of what people were fleeing during and after the revolution. With all of that said, it all comes together in the end into something that's really quite beautiful. You have to go through the unpleasantness to understand why the revelations at the end are so important and profound.