This book was just not a nice read. I don't mean that it's overly disturbing or frightening - rather, that reading it increasingly felt like a chore. The author's writing style is irritatingly bulky, especially toward the middle, which is a fairly boring infodump. The story is dominated by unpleasant characters, whom the author can't seem to decide if we should censure or sympathize with. Further, the book's apparent message is to convey a hackneyed political subtext about the dangers of so-called "Western interventionism" in the Middle East, and the author makes no effort to hide where his sympathies lie. This book is suitable only for the most absolute bleeding-heart type who also happens to have hours to spare reading paragraph after cumbersome paragraph.

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