At the end of this book I couldn't decide who I was more disgusted with. Dan Simmons for the long drawn out tale of whatever, or me for thinking he might actually tie things up in some fashion.

Like Moby Dick, this was very wordy and there really wasn't a whole lot of point to a lot of those words. I saw all the twists from a mile away, and the things that I couldn't figure out were not sufficiently explained.

I give it two stars instead of one because there was some neat storytelling in the little vignettes and I liked some of the points made (one individual's hero is another individual's war criminal). That said, I will never get the time back I spent reading this.